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LITERATURE   IN   SCHOOL 

AN  ADDRESS  AND   TWO  ESSAYS 


HORACE  E.  SCUDDER 


7^^f 


STATE  NORMAL  SCiIOOu, 

liOS  AJlCELiilS,  CRLi. 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

Boston:  4  Park  Street;  New  York:  11  East  Seventeenth  Street 
Chicago  :  378-3S8  Wabash  Avenue 

(atbc  irtiUcrsibc  press,  "JTambriboE 


Copyright,  1888, 
»r  HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 

All  ritjhts  reserved. 


The  Rivenide  Press,  Cambridge : 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  II.  0.  Ilougliton  &  Co. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

I.     THE    PLACE    OF    LITERATURE    IN    COMMON 

SCHOOL   EDUCATION 5 

II.    NURSERY  CLASSICS   IN   SCHOOL 34 

III.    AMERICAN  CLASSICS  IN  SCHOOL 44 


ck- 

it   San 


/  516 

STATE  HORi'iAl  jCuOOi-, 

IlOS  AJ4CEUHS,  CAU. 

1  f(^f 

THE  PLACE  OF  LITERATUEE  IN  COM- 
MON  SCHOOL  EDUCATION.  1 

When  Thor,  in  the  Scandinavian  story,  was 
trying  conclusions  with  the  giants,  he  was  bidden 
lift  a  cat  which  stood  before  him.  He  stooped, 
grasped  the  cat,  and  tried  to  raise  it  from  the  ground. 
The  higher  he  lifted,  the  more  the  cat  stretched, 
still  clinging  with  its  claws  to  the  earth.  When, 
with  gigantic  effort,  Thor  stood  erect,  he  had  not 
yet  disengaged  the  creature. 

"  Wonder  not,"  said  Utgard  Loke,  "  that  you 
are  not  able  to  lift  the  cat.  It  was  Jormundgarda 
herself,  the  great  serpent  that  binds  the  world." 

The  fable  comes  to  my  mind  as  I  ponder  the 
subject  assigned  to  me  at  this  meeting,  —  The 
Place  of  Literature  in  Common  School  Educa- 
tion. Literature,  Common  Schools,  Education,  — 
these  are  familiar  words ;  yet  when  we  trace  their 
roots  in  the  soil  of  human  thought,  we  find  them 
penetrating  great  depths  and  clutching  at  the  very 
foundations  of  human  order.  We  speak  of  Com- 
mon Schools,  and  our  minds  run  on  to  the  prin- 
ciple of  community  which  underlies  our  political 
ideals.    We  brood  over  Literature,  and  are  quick- 

^  Read  before  the  National  Educational  Association  at  San 
Francisco,  July  18,  1888. 


6  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

ened  by  the  spirit  which  aspires  from  the  free 
thought  of  humanity.  We  start  with  a  great 
comjiany  in  pursuit  of  the  secret  of  Education, 
and  find  ourselves  at  last  alone  with  God. 

It  is  not  unreasonable,  therefore,  that  we  should 
approach  our  subject  by  that  road  which  has  the 
guide-posts  of  history  to  mark  its  course.  A 
national  association  is  bound  to  consider  themes 
in  their  national  aspect,  and  the  historic  method, 
with  its  constant  suggestion  of  permanence  of  type 
and  development  of  form,  has  a  prime  advantage 
when  applied  to  national  topics,  since  the  nation 
at  every  stage  of  its  progress  has  consciousness  of 
identity  with  antecedent  life.  In  establishing  a 
community  of  experience  between  our  later  and 
our  earlier  conditions,  we  are  driven  to  disregard 
those  distinctions,  incident  to  change,  which  are  apt 
to  have  importance  in  our  eyes,  and  to  seek  for  the 
fundamental  unity.  The  men  and  women  of  the 
Thirteen  Colonies,  who  proved  equal  to  the  task 
of  writing  out  the  formularies  of  an  independent 
nation  were  trained  in  schools  which  look  narrow 
and  low-studded  beside  the  elaborately  equipped 
buildings  of  our  later  day.  They  had  no  clay 
models  of  continents,  yet  somehow  they  learned 
the  art  of  moulding  the  institutions  of  a  free  peo- 
j)le.  They  were  ignorant  of  the  refinements  of 
the  phonic  method  or  the  syllabic  method,  yet  they 
wei-e  found  afterward  quite  expert  in  reading  be- 
tween the  lines  of  French  diplomacy.  Improve- 
ments in  method  may  not  draw  us  away  from  a 


T^E  PLACE  OF  LITERATURE.  7 

contemplation  of  those  essentials  of  education  which 
survive  methods. 

The  motive  which  urged  our  fathers  to  the 
establishment  of  schools  was  professedly  drawn 
from  religion ;  the  motive  which  impels  us  to-day 
is  professedly  drawn  from  politics.  If  you  could 
have  asked  John  Cotton  why  it  was  well  that  the 
children  of  Massachusetts  Bay  should  be  sent  to 
school,  his  reply  would  have  been,  that  they  might 
learn  to  fear  God.  If  you  ask  yourselves  why 
the  Commonwealth  provides  common  schools,  the 
answer  is,  that  the  children  may  become  good  citi- 
zens. In  the  former  case  the  conception  of  religion 
was  bound  up  with  the  conception  of  a  particular 
ecclesiastical  order ;  in  the  latter,  the  conception 
of  politics  is  limited  by  the  special  form  of  society 
in  which  it  has  play.  The  former  anticipated  the 
political  conception,  for  the  germ  of  a  free  state 
lay  imbedded  in  the  combined  theocratic  and  com- 
mercial company ;  the  latter  has  not  lost  the  reli- 
gious conception,  for  it  guards  jealously  the  vested 
rights  of  religious  bodies.  In  both  cases  the 
human  mind  is  seen  struocolino-  toward  a  larger 
liberty. 

The  common  schools  thus  epitomize  the  nation. 
They  reflect  the  prevailing  thought  of  the  people ; 
they  embody  its  ideal.  If  we  would  measure  the 
spiritual  force  of  the  national  mind  at  any  one 
time,  we  must  examine  the  contents  of  the  com- 
mon schools,  for  as  there  comes  a  moment  in  the 
life  of  every  father  when  he  is  less  eager  for  him- 


8  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

self  and  more  concerned  for  his  child's  fortune,  so 
the  hope,  the  forecast,  the  precipitation  of  ideals 
in  the  whole  people  is  to  be  looked  for  in  the  form 
which  popular  education  takes.  The  stock-market 
is  not  a  more  delicate  register  of  the  financial  pulse 
than  is  the  common  school  of  the  national  con- 
science. Consider  along  what  lines  educational 
thought  is  running,  and  you  will  discern  on  what 
great  circles  the  nation  is  sailing.  Observe  the 
criticism  of  a  prevalent  system,  and  you  will  touch 
the  national  life  at  its  most  sensitive  nerve.  The 
counter-currents  as  well  as  the  currents  of  popular 
will  may  be  estimated  by  this  gauge. 

It  is  not  without  significance  that  you  chose  for 
your  leading  theme  last  year  Industrial  Education, 
and  that  this  year  you  have  taken  up  the  Place 
of  Literature.  The  two  subjects  indicate  the  two 
lines  along  which  educational  thought  is  moving, 
and  they  correspond  to  the  two  dominant  fields 
of  national  endeavor.  Once  an  aristocracy,  freed 
from  the  conditions  of  its  origin,  but  retaining  its 
native  properties,  ruled  in  this  country.  Its  au- 
thority was  enforced  by  religious  sanctions  and 
supported  by  the  power  of  the  English  state.  But 
it  had  also  within  itself  and  all  about  it  a  demo- 
cratic life  which  expanded  until  it  burst  the  bands 
that  constrained  it,  broke  up  so  much  of  the  old 
order  as  could  not  serve  its  purpose,  shaped  to 
itself  a  new  form  marvellously  wrought  from  the 
old  material,  and  an  organization  of  government 
stood,  compact  and  ductile,  itself  to  be  tried  before 
the  bar  of  humanity. 


THE  PLACE  OF  LITERATURE.  9 

The  revolution  which  sundered  the  formal  re- 
lations of  the  colonies  to  England  was  more  em- 
phatically the  evolution  of  a  free  people  from  the 
antecedent  condition  of  a  people  in  tutelage;  the 
aristocratic,  paternal  idea  of  government  was 
slowly  to  give  way  before  the  democratic  idea  of  ' 
a  nation  living  under  the  reign  of  law  and  choos- 
ing the  administrators  of  its  order.  The  complete 
transition  has  not  yet  been  made.  There  is  not 
yet  a  political  consciousness  which  fulfils  the  sketch 
of  national  order  contained  in  the  written  constitu- 
tions. We  are  still  under  the  control  of  ideas 
which  lie  imbedded  in  the  literature,  the  laws,  the 
traditions  of  the  English-speaking  race,  but  we  are 
also  more  or  less  aware  of  the  growth  of  political 
consciousness  toward  the  larger  ideal. 

The  dramatic  action  of  a  revolutionary  war 
brings  change  forcibly  to  our  attention,  but  we 
know  very  well  that  change  is  in  silence  as  well 
as  in  thunder.  The  earthquake  opens  a  fissure 
in  a  moment,  and  we  fancy  that,  having  done  his 
work,  the  giant  sleeps  again  for  a  hundred  years ; 
but  our  reasonable  knowledge  shows  us  that  this 
whole  earth  of  ours  palpitates  with  life,  and  that 
life  is  wakefulness,  change,  energy.  Thus,  we  can- 
not extend  the  horizon  of  our  thought  at  this  time 
without  being  aware  that  this  new  democratic  order 
in  which  we  are  living,  and  wliose  centennial  birth- 
day we  have  celebrated  with  gun  and  flag  and 
speech  and  show,  is  passing  through  changes  which, 
whether  normal  or  cataclysmal,  shall  one  day  offer 


10  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

to  the  historian  the  opportunity  of  saying :  The 
old  order  has  passed,  the  new  has  come. 

We  know  that  the  hands  which  are  nervously 
pulling  at  the  stones  of  our  political  edifice  are 
hands  that  are  knotted  with  hopeless  toil,  but  we 
know  also  that  the  hands  which  built  and  the  hands 
which  sustain  our  political  order  are  brown  and 
strong  with  purposeful  labor.  We  do  not  fear  the 
outcome,  but  we  see  clearly  that  the  social  prob- 
lems which  confront  us  concern  the  most  elemen- 
tal conditions  of  society,  and  that  the  relations  of 
labor  to  well-being  are  to  determine  the  final  issue. 
Therefore  in  this  hour  of  its  coming  struggle  the 
nation  looks  to  its  schools,  and  says :  Here  shall 
we  make  our  stand,  cast  up  our  entrenchments,  and 
be  ready  to  meet  the  enemy. 

The  danger  which  threatens  the  nation  is  two- 
fold in  manifestation,  but  single  in  spirit.  The  de- 
fence which  we  are  setting  up  in  our  schools  is  like- 
wise twofold,  but  may  be  referi-ed  to  a  single  pur- 
pose. The  cry  of  Labor  in  Poverty  is  for  a  share 
in  the  good  things  of  life,  but  we  whose  ears  are  at- 
tuned to  finer  sounds  may  detect  in  the  cry  a  more 
penetrating  note.  Legion,  cutting  himself  with 
stones  and  rushing  famished  into  the  haunts  of 
men,  recognized  the  face  of  the  Son  of  God ;  and 
Labor  in  Poverty,  desperate  in  its  mood,  muttering 
at  established  order,  still  wards  off  the  light  which 
it  sees  in  the  face  of  righteousness  and  pity.  The 
nation  that  looks  upon  this  devil-possessed  is  con- 
scious  that  its  own   highest  life  is   not   in   bread 


THE  PLACE   OF  LITERATURE.  11 

alone,  but  in  every  word  which  proceedeth  out  of 
the  mouth  of  God.  The  sight  of  matei'ial  prosperity 
which  has  so  wrought  upon  and  inflamed  Labor  in 
Poverty  has  likewise  struck  upon  the  conscience  of 
the  nation,  and  has  caused  that  note  of  alarm  which 
is  heard  in  private  talk,  in  journals,  in  books,  from 
the  platform,  and  from  the  pulpit. 

For  the  peril  which  springs  from  an  anarchic 
force  outside  of  the  true  democratic  order  is  accom- 
panied by  the  peril  which  ai'ises  from  the  more  in- 
sidious, disintegrating  force  of  disbelief  resident  in 
every  part  of  the  body  politic.  When  a  man  loses 
belief  in  any  higher  good  than  his  own  personal 
comfort,  the  deterioration  of  his  nature  goes  on 
rapidly.  When  a  nation  loses  faith  in  its  ideals, 
turns  its  back  on  its  own  history,  refuses  to  believe 
in  its  divine  origin,  its  divine  order,  its  divine  end, 
shuts  its  eyes  to  the  goal  of  history,  sneers  at  sacri- 
fice and  worships  worldly  success,  then  that  nation 
is  laying  itself  open  to  a  more  sure  loss  of  liberty 
than  could  possibly  result  from  exposure  to  outside 
attack. 

The  protest  of  the  spiritual  man  against  the  tyr- 
anny of  materialism  takes  various  forms.  Now 
it  is  a  glorification  of  plain  living  and  high  think- 
ing ;  now  an  appeal  to  college  and  university  for 
exact  philosophy  and  an  intellectual  survey  of  life  ; 
now  a  demand  for  the  establishment  of  schools 
of  art  and  for  funds  in  the  aid  of  students  of  art 
and  for  the  endowment  of  research  ;  now  a  vigor- 
ous movement  on  the  part  of  the  churches  to  ex- 


12  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

tend  their  domain,  and  now  a  distinct  call  for  a 
closer  union  between  the  elementary  schools  and 
the  church.  The  ^'oice  raised  by  the  demand  of 
men  for  something  more  satisfying  than  bread  is 
penetrating  rather  than  loud,  deep  rather  than 
vociferous.  It  is  answered  in  part  by  the  tribute 
which  material  prosperity  is  paying.  In  the  im- 
mediate neighborhood  men  hear  the  clink  of  the 
mason's  trowel  and  the  sound  of  the  hammer,  but 
to  the  ear  and  the  eye  of  the  imagination  there  are 
rising  all  over  the  land,  as  if  in  the  building  of 
dreams,  multitudes  of  fair  structures  sacred  to 
scholarship,  to  letters,  to  art,  and  to  religion.  Not 
in  the  politic  votes  of  legislatures  so  much  as  in  the 
free  gift  of  men  and  women  everywhere  is  the  es- 
tablishment of  universities,  colleges,  schools  of  art 
and  science,  expeditions  to  Greece  and  Egypt,  trav- 
elling scholarships,  public  libraries,  churches  and 
church  institutions.  The  uncounted  gold  that  is 
poured  into  the  treasury  of  the  temple  has  upon  it 
the  image  and  superscription  of  Caesar,  but  is  trans- 
nmted  by  the  alclxnuy  of  consecration  into  a  more 
precious  metal,  stamped  with  divine  emblems. 
Materialism  has  many  forms  of  expression ;  spirit- 
ual life  is  also  varied  in  its  manifestation.  Never- 
theless, as  the  grossest,  most  exclusive  form  of  ma- 
terialism is  in  the  slavery  of  the  soul  to  the  senses, 
and  the  deliberate  shutting  out  of  the  spiritual  in 
our  life  always  tends  to  the  enthronement  of  the 
lower  self,  so  the  finest,  most  unimpeded  expression 
of  the  spiritual  nature  is  in  conscious  communion 


THE  PLACE   OF  LITERATURE.  13 

with  God ;  to  this  the  exercise  of  our  higher  facili- 
ties tends,  and  we  measure  the  force  of  spiritual  in- 
fluences by  their  capacity  to  give  wings  to  the  soul, 
to  set  it  free  from  the  control  of  meaner,  baser  ap- 
petites, and  to  give  the  unseen  supremacy  over  the 
seen. 

I  repeat  that  the  two  leading  activities  of  the  na- 
tional conscience  at  this  hour  regard  the  just  rela- 
tions of  labor  to  wealth  and  the  superiority  of  the 
spiritual  to  the  material,  and  that  this  double  ac- 
tivity is  mirrored  in  the  double  pressure  upon  our 
schools ;  that  on  one  side  the  axe,  the  hammer,  the 
saw,  the  file,  the  pencil,  and  the  needle  are  thrust 
into  the  child's  hand  ;  on  the  other,  literature  in  its 
purest,  noblest  form  seeks  an  entrance  to  the  soul 
through  the  eye  and  the  ear  of  the  child.  I  repeat 
also  that  great  as  is  the  apparent  distance  between 
our  present  school  condition  and  that  which  existed 
in  the  early  days  of  the  nation,  the  essential  near- 
ness is  quite  as  marked.  In  primitive  times,  when 
our  national  life  was  less  complex,  there  was  no 
necessity  for  the  organization  of  education  of  the 
hand.  An  enormous  pressure  of  circumstance  made 
the  boys  farmers,  artisans,  hunters,  seamen  ;  the 
girls  housewives,  in  alternation  with  their  experi- 
ence of  books.  No  nice  adjustment  of  intellectual 
and  manual  pursuits  was  called  for ;  school  waite'd 
on  the  farm  and  the  shop,  and  each  made  way  for 
the  other.  This  relation  is  not  iinknown  to-day, 
and  on  the  sands  of  Cape  Cod,  within  sound  of  the 
water  that  has  covered  the  footprints  of  the  Pil- 


14  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

grims,   the  hand  drops   the   slate-pencil    and   the 
chalk  when  the  ripe  cranberry  summons. 

In  like  manner  the  spiritual  training  of  the 
young  was  determined  by  the  conditions  of  society 
and  limited  by  the  horizon  which  encircled  the  com- 
munity. In  the  conception  of  that  day  religion  and 
theology  were  synonymous  terms,  and  Christianity 
itself  was  an  ecclesiastical  structure.  The  tremen- 
dous conflict  which  the  Puritan  waged  with  the 
powers  of  darkness  was  such  a  hand-to-hand  fight 
that  he  recognized  no  friends  who  did  not  wear  his 
colors,  and  saw  in  art,  in  literature,  and  in  nature 
itself  only  foes  in  disguise.  The  one  weapon  which 
he  used,  his  sword,  his  buckler,  his  shield,  his  jave- 
lin, his  whole  armory  for  defence  and  for  attack, 
was  the  Bible.  I  count  it  not  the  least  of  the  mir- 
acles wrought  by  this  book  that  it  should  have  so 
transformed  the  nature  of  the  people  worshiping 
it  as  to  have  spiritualized  and  rationalized  the  con- 
ception in  which  it  is  held.  \^  e  speak  of  the 
steady  degradation  of  idolaters  who  begin  by  using 
an  image  as  the  shelter  of  a  god,  and  end  by  rever- 
encing only  the  stock  or  stone  from  which  all  no- 
tion of  the  god  has  fled.  But  I  do  not  hesitate  to 
say  that  the  spectacle  of  modern  Anglo-Saxon  Prot- 
estant Christianity  deliberately  destroying  its  idol 
of  literal  insi)iration  in  order  to  apprehend  more 
perfectly  tlie  divinity  enshrined  within  the  sacred 
edifice  is  one  of  the  most  striking  manifestations  of 
the  power  of  spiritual  Christianity.  While  assail- 
ants have  aimed  to  overthrow  the  authority  of  this 


THE  PLACE   OF  LITERATURE.  15 

ark  of  the  covenant,  the  reverent  hands  of  the  most 
fearless,  yet  most  devout,  scholars  in  Christendom 
have  been  at  work  tearing  down  the  defences  which 
men  have  set  up  about  it,  confident  that  no  power 
on  earth  can  destroy  the  real  sacredness.  That 
is  as  indestructible  as  light.  The  revision  of  the 
Bible,  by  opening  the  Bible  wider,  has  put  an  end 
to  bibliolatry. 

Now  the  ecclesiastical  progenitors  of  the  men  in 
this  country  who  have  engaged  in  this  work  of 
revision  set  an  extraordinary  value  on  the  Bible, 
making  it  in  fact  the  political  as  well  as  the  re- 
ligious text-book  of  the  people.  They  did  more. 
They  gave  it  a  supreme  and  exclusive  place  in 
the  home  and  the  school.  They  used  it  as  a  read- 
ing-book because  their  conception  of  education  was 
a  religious  conception,  and  the  Bible  was  first  and 
always  in  their  minds  a  religious  book.  Its  au- 
thority was  unimpeachable,  and  its  influence  was 
enormous.  Within  its  lids  were  shut  all  those  lit- 
erary forces  which  made  for  the  spiritual  enrich- 
ment of  the  boy  or  girl.  Rightly  was  it  named 
the  book  of  books,  for  outside  of  this  book  there 
was  scarcely  any  literature  of  light  accessible,  while 
within  it  the  sky  overarched  the  human  soul. 
History,  biography,  political  philosophy,  ethics, — 
all  these  lay  on  the  pages  of  the  Bible,  and  the 
reasoning  faculties  were  strengthened  and  stimu- 
lated by  means  of  this  book,  but  the  forcible  dis- 
cussions in  church  and  state  served  the  same  ^nd, 
and  the  world   save  forth  a  literature   of  knowl- 


16  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

edge  and  dialectics  which  was  availed  of.  What 
our  fathers  did  not  receive  from  the  world  to  any 
considerable  extent  was  that  literature  of  the 
spirit^  which  finds  a  response  in  the  imagination 
and  fancy.  There  was,  indeed,  in  the  educated 
class  a  recourse  still  to  the  spring  of  Helicon  and 
the  mount  of  Parnassus,  but  I  a,m  keeping  in  mind 
those  who  had  not  a  classical  education.  The  lit- 
erature of  light  that  had  its  expression  in  English 
letters  was  frowned  upon  in  the  Puritan  judgment, 
but  by  a  great  and  fortunate  provision  it  was  not 
excluded  from  the  Puritan  common  education. 
The  Bible  contained  what  was  necessary  to  salva- 
tion, and  so,  in  a  scheme  which  resolved  society 
into  individual  persons,  the  Bible  became  the  pos- 
session of  each  person.  Most  truly  was  it  neces- 
sary to  salvation.  It  saved  men  from  the  starva- 
tion of  their  higher  natures.  It  fed  the  sources  of 
spiritual  power.  This  book  brought  poetry  and 
the  vision  into  minds  which  otherwise  would  have 
been  darkened  by  knowledge.  It  spanned  the 
whole  arc  of  hiuiian  life  with  its  bow  of  promise, 
and  the  radiant  light  which  streamed  from  psalm, 
from  ])ro])hecy,  from  narrative  and  parable,  pene- 
trated the  minds  of  the  young.  The  sanctity  which 
was  thrown  around  it  enhanced  the  power  of  its 
appeal   to  the  spirit,  and  while  its  teachers   were 

'  I  have  changed  slightly  the  terms  of  the  familiar  distinction 
formulated  by  De  Quincey,  who  divided  literature  into  the  litera- 
ture of  knowledge  and  the  literature  of  power,  because  I  think 
tlie  term  spirit  more  definitive. 


THE  PLACE   OF  LITERATURE.  17 

using  it  for  its  doctrinal  efficiency  and  also  as  a 
reading -book  in  the  schools,  they  were  opening 
vistas  into  the  realm  of  poetic  beauty,  all  other 
entrances  to  which  they  had  carefully  closed. ' 

In  process  of  time,  as  the  religious  power  which 
so  largely  influenced  our  early  educational  system 
in  this  country  relaxed  its  stringent  hold,  and  gave 
place  to  a  philosophy  which  partook  of  the  prevail- 
ing intellectual  temper  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
the  Bible  became  less  exclusively  the  book  of  the 

^  I  have  been  speaking,  of  course,  of  a  condition  of  American 
life,  with  special  reference  to  New  England.  I  am  glad  to  quote 
here  the  forcible  words  in  which  the  same  theme  is  presented  by 
the  late  Matthew  Arnold  in  reference  to  English  life.  "  Only 
one  literature  there  is,  one  great  literature,  for  which  the  people 
have  had  a  preparation,  —  the  literature  of  the  Bible.  However 
far  they  may  be  from  having  a  complete  preparation  for  it,  they 
have  some  ;  and  it  is  the  only  great  literature  for  which  they  have 
any.  Their  bringing  up,  what  they  have  heard  and  talked  of  ever 
since  they  were  born,  have  given  them  no  sort  of  conversance  with 
the  forms,  fashions,  notions,  wordings,  allusions,  of  literature  hav- 
ing its  source  in  Greece  and  Rome ;  but  they  have  given  them  a 
good  deal  of  conversance  with  the  forms,  fashions,  notions,  word- 
ings, allusions,  of  the  Bible.  Zion  and  Babylon  are  their  Athens 
and  Rome,  their  Ida  and  OljTnpus  are  Tabor  and  Hermon,  Sharon 
is  their  Tenipe ;  these  and  the  like  Bible  names  can  reach  their 
imagination,  kindle  trains  of  thought  and  remembrance  in  them. 
The  elements  with  which  the  literature  of  Greece  and  Rome  con- 
jures have  no  power  on  them ;  the  elements  with  which  the  litera- 
ture of  the  Bible  conjures  have.  Therefore  I  have  so  often  in- 
sisted in  reports  to  the  Education  Department,  on  the  need,  if  from 
this  point  of  view  only,  for  the  Bible  in  schools  for  the  people. 
If  poetry,  philosophy,  and  eloquence,  if  what  we  call  in  one  word 
letters,  are  a  power,  and  a  beneficent  wonder-working  power,  in 
education,  through  the  Bible  only  have  the  people  much  chance 
of  getting  at  poetry,  philosophy,  and  eloquence." — The  Great 
Prophecy  of  IsraeVs  Restoration,  p.  10. 


18  LITERATURE  IN  SCliOOL. 

people  and  less  distinctly  the  one  book  of  the 
schools.  But  the  schools  themselves  suffered  foi-  a 
while  a  neglect  in  the  public  estimation.  It  should 
be  remembered  that  England  gave  little  help  to  the 
colonies  or  to  the  young  republic  in  this  matter, 
for  popular  education  in  England  was  to  receive 
its  impulse  after  many  days  from  America  itself. 
In  the  low  ebb  of  our  educational  life,  when  the 
first  great  religious  force  was  spent,  and  the  second 
great  political  force  had  not  yet  awaked,  literature 
was  represented  in  our  schools  by  such  a  book  as 
Bingham's  Cohiinhlun  Orator,  which  contained,  as 
its  title-page  promised,  "  a  variety  of  original  and 
selected  pieces,  together  with  rules  calculated  to 
improve  youth  and  others  in  the  ornamental  and 
useful  art  of  eloquence."  It  is  noticeable  that 
literature  and  speech-making  were  nearly  identical 
in  the  minds  of  people  at  that  period.  The  poetry 
of  the  book  was  from  Hannah  More,  Addison, 
and  liowe.  There  was  a  farce  by  Garrick,  and 
a  passage  from  Miss  Burney's  Camilla  arranged 
as  a  dialogue. 

When  this  indifference  to  schools  began  to  give 
way  before  the  growing  sense  of  the  importance  to 
the  country  of  a  general  education,  the  result  was 
seen  in  the  production  of  a  higher  class  of  school- 
readers.  Those  who  remember  the  American  First 
Class  Book  and  others  of  its  kind  will  recollect 
how  high  was  the  order  of  literature  presented  in 
these  books.  They  held  their  place  for  a  while,  but 
by  degrees  a  change  occurred,  and  the  new  order 


THE  PLACE   OF  LITERATURE.  19 

is  an  interesting  one  to  consider,  both  because  it 
was  part  of  a  more  extended  mental  process,  and 
because,  as  I  think,  we  are  now  passing  out  from 
under  its  influence. 

Roughly  speaking,  our  present  system  of  common 
schools  is  about  fifty  years  old,  and  in  that  time 
there  has  been  an  extraordinary  activity  in  the  pi'o- 
duction  of  text-books  in  the  great  departments  of 
human  knowledge.  This  activity  is  a  natural  result 
of  the  wide-spread  attention  to  popular  education. 
It  is  not  the  competition  of  publishers  alone  but 
the  set  of  public  interest  which  has  made  our  geog- 
raphies, histories,  arithmetics,  and  spellers  so  elab- 
orate, so  ingenious,  and  so  attractive  in  mechanical 
aspects.  Every  specialist  in  education  sees  defects 
in  the  text-books  which  teach  his  science.  If  he 
makes  a  text-book  himself,  it  is  because  he  cannot 
find  in  any  of  those  in  use  just  the  quality  which 
rises  before  his  mind  as  the  ideal  excellence,  and 
after  he  has  made  his  own  he  longs  to  bring  out 
a  new  and  revised  edition.  This  authorial  energy 
has  kept  pace  with  the  growth  of  the  school  system. 
It  would  be  hard  to  compute  the  literary  force 
which  has  found  a  field  for  exercise  in  the  con- 
struction of  school  text-books  in  America.  It  may 
be  said  to  be  the  one  department  of  literature 
where,  without  international  copyright,  American 
authors  have  had  full  play,  and  have  been  affected 
scarcely  at  all  by  English  book-makers.  The  text- 
book literature  of  America  is  almost  as  indepen- 
dent of  English  literature  of  the  same  kind  as  if  the 


20  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

writers  were  debarred  by  law  from  the  use  of  Eng- 
lish material.  They  were  not  debarred  by  law,  but 
they  were  subject  to  that  higher,  unwritten  law 
which  makes  a  great  institution  like  the  common 
schools  of  an  independent  nation  compel  those  who 
serve  the  institution  to  consider  its  peculiar  needs, 
and  to  be  strongly  affected  by  the  spirit  which  re- 
sides in  it.  The  schools  of  our  country  have  had 
such  innate  force  that  they  have  shaped  themselves 
and  the  apparatus  they  require  after  the  law  of 
their  own  being,  and  not  after  some  foreign  model. 
We  go  to  England  and  France  and  Germany  and 
Sweden  and  Russia,  and  bring  back  criticisms  on 
our  methods  and  suggestions  ;  but  after  all  the 
Americanism  of  our  schools,  whether  its  force  is 
for  good  or  for  evil,  is  too  potent  to  be  greatly 
modified  })y  other  nationalities. 

Now  while  this  activity  in  fitting  text-books  to 
the  needs  of  schools  has  been  exercised  freely  in 
the  direction  of  the  literature  of  knowledge,  what 
do  we  see  in  the  field  of  text-book  literature  of 
the  spirit?  Externally,  a  like  advance  in  all  that 
attracts  the  eye.  The  reading-books  are  often  ex- 
ceedingly beautiful.  The  best  of  paper  is  used, 
the  type  is  clear,  and  there  is  a  profusion  of  deli- 
cate wood-cuts.  Again,  there  is  evident  the  same 
refinement  in  method  which  characterizes  other 
text-books,  a  like  regai'd  for  intellectual  gradation, 
a  minute  attention  to  all  the  apparatus  of  reading, 
the  details  of  pronunciation,  of  definition,  of  ac- 
cent.   In  a  word,  the  reading-books  partake  of  pre- 


THE  PLACE  OF  LITERATURE.  21 

cisely  the  characteristics  which  are  observable  in 
other  text-books.  They  stand,  on  the  same  footing 
with  geographies,  histories,  arithmetics,  and  spellers. 
They  are  grouped  in  the  same  system.  It  is  not 
uncommon  to  see  a  series  embracing  all  these 
elementary  studies,  and  the  craze  for  uniformity 
is  satisfied  by  finding  readers,  arithmetics,  geogra- 
phies, and  spellers  all  made  by  one  man,  published 
in  external  harmony  by  one  house,  and  applied 
with  nice  precision  of  grading  to  all  the  children 
in  a  town. 

But  the  agreement  between  the  text-book  litera- 
ture of  knowledge  and  the  text-book  literature  of 
spirit  is  even  closer  than  through  external  con- 
formity. There  has  been  a  constant  attempt  at 
making  the  latter  do  the  work  of  the  former. 
Elaborate  systems  have  been  contrived  by  which 
the  pupil  when  employed  in  the  exercise  of  read- 
ing shall  reinforce  the  departments  of  knowledge. 
His  reading-book  tends  to  become  an  encyclopae- 
dia, and  it  is  hoped  that  when  he  has  escaped  the 
toils  of  the  biologist,  the  geographer,  the  historian, 
he  will  find  in  his  reading-book  more  natural  his- 
tory, more  geography,  more  civil  and  political  his- 
tory. The  idle  muses  are  set  at  work.  Pegasus  is 
harnessed  to  a  tip-cart. 

This  indifference  to  the  higher  functions  of  lit- 
erature, this  disposition  to  regard  the  reading-book 
as  mainly  a  means  for  promoting  an  acquaintance 
with  the  forms  of  written  speech,  —  whence  is  its 
origin?     Wliy  is  it  tliat  with  the  whole  realm  of 


22  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

English  literature  open  to  the  text -book  maker, 
there  should  have  been  until  recently  almost  an 
entire  disregard  of  it,  especially  in  the  construction 
of  those  grades  of  reading-books  which  are  coex- 
tensive with  the  school  life  of  the  vast  majority  of 
American  children?  I  think  the  answer  will  be 
found  in  the  power  of  this  great  institution  of 
common  schools  to  compel  those  who  serve  it  to 
partake  of  its  spirit,  to  be  strongly  affected  by  the 
very  character  of  the  life  which  they  are  seeking 
to  shape. 

To  see  the  bearings  of  this,  we  must  take  into 
view  the  whole  mass  of  literature  for  the  young. 
The  period  of  fifty  years  last  past  has  witnessed 
an  increasing  volume  of  this  literature,  and  also 
the  growth  of  a  sentiment  in  favor  of  it.  The 
disposition  to  separate  the  reading  of  the  young 
from  the  reading  of  the  mature  is  of  very  modern 
development,  and  it  has  resulted  in  the  creation 
of  a  distinct  order  of. books,  magazines,  and  papers. 
Not  only  has  there  been  great  industry  in  author- 
ship, but  great  industry  also  in  editorial  work. 
The  classics  of  litei'ature  have  been  drawn  upon 
not  so  much  through  selection  as  through  adapta- 
tion. Great  works,  whose  greatness  lay  much  in 
their  perfection  of  form,  have  been  diminished  and 
brought  low  for  the  use  of  the  young.  The  ac- 
cumulation of  this  great  body  of  reading  matter 
—  we  can  scarcely  call  it  literature  —  has  been 
largely  in  consequence  of  the  immense  addition  to 
the  reading  population  caused  by  the  extension  of 


THE  PLACE    OF  LITERATURE.  23 

the  common-school  system.  When  the  children  of 
a  nation  are  taken  at  the  age  of  five  or  six  and 
kept  eight  or  ten  years  at  school,  and  this  schooling 
becomes  the  great  feature  of  their  life,  dominating 
their  activity  and  determining  the  character  of 
their  thought,  it  is  natural  that  books  and  reading 
should  be  largely  accessory,  and  that  the  quality 
of  the  audience  should  strongly  affect  the  kind  of 
speech  addressed  to  it.  In  a  general  way  this  great 
horde  of  young  readers  in  America  has  created  a 
large  number  of  special  writers  for  the  young,  and 
both  readers  and  writers  have  been  governed  by 
the  American  life  which  they  lead.  > 

Now  the  text-books  in  reading  which  have  pre- 
vailed in  our  schools  have  come  under  this  influence, 
—  an  influence  pervasive  and  unstudied  rather  than 
acute  and  determined.  The  quantitative  and  not 
the  qualitative  test  has  been  regarded.  By  no  pre- 
concerted signal,  but  in  obedience  to  the  law  of  their 
social  and  literary  life,  the  makers  of  reading-books 
began  to  disregard  English  standards  and  to  fill 
these  books  with  the  commonplace  of  their  own 
writing  and  that  of  those  about  them.  They  lost 
their  sense  of  literature  as  a  fine  art,  and  looked 
upon  it  only  as  an  exercise  in  elocution  and  the 
vehicle  for  knowledge,  or  at  the  highest  for  ethics 
and  patriotic  sentiment.  They  lost  also  their  ap- 
prehension of  the  power  of  great  literature  in  its 
wholes,  and  made  their  books  collections  of  frag- 
ments. There  are  two  facts  which  signally  char- 
acterize the  condition  of  the  popular  mind  under 


24  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

this  regime  :  first,  that  literature  is  relegated  to  the 
higher  grades  as  something  to  be  studied  ;  and, 
secondly,  that  the  newspaper  is  advocated  as  a 
reading-book  in  schools.  So  remote  has  literature 
come  to  be  in  the  popular  conception.  This  state 
of  things  may  have  been  inevitable ;  it  is  none 
the  less  deplorable. 

If  it  ever  was  inevitable,  it  is  so  no  longer.  The 
Americanism  which  controls  our  common  schools 
has  had  during  this  period  of  fifty  years  a  devel- 
opment in  a  direction  of  the  utmost  value  to  edu- 
cation. The  organization  of  the  common  -  school 
system  has  come  to  be  a  great  factor  in  our  civili- 
zation. It  yields  statistics  with  extraordinary  fa- 
cility. The  value  of  school  property,  the  number 
of  children  in  schools,  the  number  of  teachers,  the 
sums  expended  in  salaries,  the  cost  of  the  plant, 
the  running  expenses,  —  all  these  things  can  be 
faintly  guessed  at  by  any  one  who  sits  down  be- 
fore the  reports  of  the  Bureau  of  Education  in 
Washington.  The  results  seem  to  be  measurable  ; 
such  a  mighty  engine,  such  an  expenditure  of  fuel, 
so  much  power.  We  can  marshal  the  figures  and 
set  them  against  the  figures  of  the  standing  armies 
of  Europe.  The  eye,  the  ear,  are  assaulted  by  this 
great  array  of  mobilized  facts.  And  yet  the  lar- 
gest fact  remains,  that  the  system  knows  no  central 
bureau  organizing  and  directing  it,  no  bead,  no 
compact  array  of  officers  ordering  and  controlling 
it.  It  is  a  living  organism,  sentient  in  all  its  parts, 
moving  under  discipline,  yet  the  discipline  of  law 


THE  PLACE   OF  LITERATURE.  25 

beyond  the  mastery  of  any  man.  It  is  at  once  an 
exponent  of  national  life  and  one  of  the  great 
forces  of  America. 

Look  now  upon  this  other  page  of  our  national 
history,  which  lies  open  by  its  side.  Fifty  years 
ago  there  were  living  in  America  six  men  of  mark, 
of  whom  the  youngest  was  then  nineteen  years  of 
age,  the  oldest  forty-four.  Three  of  the  six  are  in 
their  graves,  and  three  still  breathe  the  kindly  air. 
One  only  of  the  six  has  held  high  place  in  the 
national  councils,  and  it  is  not  by  that  distinction 
that  he  is  known  and  loved.  They  have  not  been 
in  battle  ;  they  have  had  no  armies  at  their  com- 
mand ;  they  have  not  amassed  great  fortunes,  nor 
have  great  industries  waited  on  their  movements. 
Those  pageants  of  circumstance  which  kindle  the 
imagination  have  been  remote  from  their  names. 
They  were  born  on  American  soil ;  they  have 
breathed  American  air ;  they  were  nurtured  on 
American  ideas.  They  are  Americans  of  Amer- 
icans. They  are  as  truly  the  issue  of  our  national 
life  as  are  the  common  schools  in  which  we  glory. 
During  the  fifty  years  in  which  our  common-school 
system  has  been  growing  to  maturity,  these  six 
have  lived  and  sung ;  and  I  dare  to  say  that  the 
lives  and  songs  of  Bryant,  Emerson,  Longfellow, 
Whittier,  Holmes,  and  Lowell  have  an  imperish- 
able value  regarded  as  exponents  of  national  life, 
not  for  a  moment  to  be  outweiglied  in  the  bal- 
ance by  the  most  elaborate  system  of  common 
schools  which  the  wit  of  man  may  devise.     The  na- 


26  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

tion  rnay  command  armies  and  schools  to  rise  from 
its  soil,  but  it  cannot  call  into  life  a  poet.  Yet 
when  the  poet  comes,  and  we  hear  his  voice  in  the 
ni)i)er  air,  then  we  know  that  the  nation  he  owns 
is  worthy  of  the  name.  Do  men  gather  grapes  of 
tliorns,  or  figs  of  thistles?  even  so,  pure  poetry 
s])rings  from  no  rank  soil  of  national  life. 

From  the  Americanism,  then,  that  is  the  mere 
appropriation  of  the  nearest  good,  we  turn  to  that 
Americanism  which  partakes  of  the  ideal  and  the 
spiritual.  It  is  not  a  remote  concern  of  our  com- 
mon schools  that  these  six  poets  whom  I  have 
named  because  they  are  distinctively  poets,  and 
those  other  great  ones  like  Hawthorne,  Irving,  and 
Cooper,  who  associate  with  them  in  spiritual  power, 
have  been  the  consummate  flower  of  American  life  ; 
for  it  is  through  their  works  that  spiritual  light 
most  surely  and  immediately  may  penetrate  our 
common  schools.  We  cannot  turn  back  the  wheels 
of  time  and  replace  thd"  Bible  as  the  sole  reading- 
book.  The  day  may  come  when  the  reasonable 
and  reverent  study  of  this  book  shall  be  an  es- 
sential part  of  the  education  of  every  child  in 
America,  and  Christianity  shall  not  be  robbed  of 
its  most  precious  document  and  most  efficient 
teacher  by  irrational  methods,  false  notions  of  rev- 
erence, and  professional  assumptions  ;  but  that  day 
has  not  yet  come,  and  we  may  meanwhile  take 
courage  and  have  hope  when  we  consider  in  how 
many  schools  of  the  land  its  words  still  fall  daily 
on  the  listening  ear   as   the    blessing    before    the 


THE  PLACE  OF  LITERATURE.  27 

morning  task.  We  cannot,  I  say,  nor  wonld  we, 
replace  the  Bible  as  the  sole  reading-book.  The 
conditions  of  our  life  and  thought  forbid  this. 
The  avenues  by  which  spiritual  power  finds  en- 
trance to  the  soul  are  more  varied  than  our  fathei's 
supposed,  or  than  we  have  yet  fully  recognized  in 
our  systems  of  education,  although  we  ai'e  feeling 
our  way  upward.  Nature  is  such  an  avenue,  and 
we  have  not  yet  learned  to  place  our  school-houses 
in  gardens,  as  we  one  day  shall,  though  there  are 
glimpses  of  the  perception  of  this  truth  in  many 
bright  school-rooms  in  the  land.  Music  is  such  an 
avenue,  so  also  is  art,  but  neither  music  nor  art, 
though  there  are  signs  of  greater  native  earnest- 
ness in  application  to  them  in  America,  has  any- 
thing like  the  possibility  of  power  to  affect  the 
spiritual  nature  of  children  which  our  literature 
possesses.  God  has  set  great  lamps  in  the  heaven 
of  our  national  life,  and  it  is  for  us  to  let  the  ra- 
diance stream  into  the  minds  of  the  children  in 
our  schools. 

I  am  not  arguing  for  the  critical  stiidy  of  our 
great  authors  in  the  higher  grades  of  our  schools. 
They  are  not  the  best  subjects  for  critical  scholar- 
ship ;  criticism  demands  greater  remoteness,  greater 
foreignness  of  nature.  Moreover,  critical  study  is 
not  the  surest  method  of  securing  the  full  measure 
of  spiritual  light,  though  it  yields  abundant  gain  in 
the  refinement  of  the  intellectual  nature,  and  in  the 
quickening  of  the  perceptive  faculties.  I  am  argu- 
ing for  the  free,  generous  use  of  these  authors  in 


28  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

the  principal  years  of  school  life.  It  is  then  that 
their  power  is  most  profoundly  needed  and  will  be 
most  strongly  felt.  We  need  to  put  our  children 
in  their  impressionable  years  into  instant  and  close 
connection  with  the  highest  manifestation  of  our 
national  life.  Away  with  the  bottle  and  the  tube ! 
Give  them  a   lusty  draught  at    the    mother's   full 

breast ! 

It  may  be  objected  that  this  is  too  restricted  a 
view  to  take  of  literature  in  our  common  schools. 
Why  not,  some  may  say,  give  them  the  best  we 
have,  irrespective  of  time?  are  there  not  writers 
to-day,  whose  Americanism  is  just  as  fervid  and 
who  stand  a  little  closer  to  the  ear  by  reason  of 
their  youth  and  promise  ?  I  answer  that  we  can- 
not afford  to  dismiss  from  the  account  the  immense 
value  which  our  classical  writers  have  by  reason  of 
their  being  classical.  The  perspective  in  which  we 
see  them  adds  to  their  symmetry  in  our  eyes,  and 
there  has  grown  up  about  them  already  a  circum- 
stance which  invests  them  with  dignity  and  author- 
ity. They  are  in  the  philosophic  sense  idols  of  the 
imagination,  and  by  virtue  of  the  divinity  which 
thus  hedges  them,  their  lightest  words  have  a 
weight  which  is  incommunicable  by  those  spoken 
from  the  lips  of  men  and  women  not  yet  elevated 
above  the  young  by  the  affection  and  admiration  of 
generations  of  readers.  To  the  group  which  I  have 
named  others  will  be  added  from  time  to  time,  but 
for  educational  purposes,  the  writers  whom  Amer- 
ica has  accepted  as  her  great  first  group  must  long 
continue  to  have  a  power  unattainable  by  others. 


THE  PLACE   OF  LITERATURE.  29 

I  have  not  cared  to  divide  my  argument;  to 
show  the  power  of  humane  literature  in  enlarging- 
and  eni-iching  the  common-school  system,  and  then 
to  demonstrate  that  American  literature  is  the  most 
fit  instrument  to  this  end.  I  have  preferred  to  pos- 
tulate what  is  inescapable,  that  A  merican  literature 
of  some  sort  our  schools  will  have,  and  I  call  you 
away  from  the  cheap,  commonplace,  fragmentary 
American  literature  of  our  school  text-books,  which 
has  so  long  done  disservice,  to  the  inspiriting,  noble, 
luminous,  and  large-hearted  American  literature 
which  waits  admission  at  the  doors  of  our  school- 
houses.  The  volume  of  this  literature  is  not  very 
great,  and  it  is  lessened  for  practical  purposes  by 
parts  which  are  inappropriate  for  school  use  ;  but 
it  would  not  be  difficult  to  replace  the  volume  of 
reading  matter  offered  in  the  reading-books  above 
the  grade  of  the  elementary,  by  an  equal  volume  of 
American  classic  literature,  and  the  gain  would  be 
enormous.  If,  according  to  the  common  practice  in 
our  schools,  the  child  were  reading  over  and  over 
and  over  again  the  great  literature  which  he  would 
never  forget  in  place  of  the  little  literature  which 
he  will  never  remember,  how  immeasurable  would 
be  the  difference  in  the  furnishing  of  his  mind  ! 

Nor  do  I  fear  that  such  a  course  would  breed  a 
narrow  and  parochial  Americanism.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  would  destroy  a  vulgar  pride  in  country, 
help  the  young  to  see  humanity  from  the  heights  on 
which  the  masters  of  song  have  dwelt,  and  open  the 
mind  to  the  more  hospitable  entertainment  of  the 


30  LITERATURE   IN  SCHOOL. 

best  literature  of  every  clime  and  age.  I  am  con- 
vinced that  there  is  no  surer  way  to  introduce  the 
best  English  literature  into  our  schools  than  to  give 
the  place  of  honor  to  American  literature.  In  the 
order  of  nature,  the  youth  must  be  a  citizen  of  his 
own  country  before  he  can  become  naturalized  in 
the  world.  We  recognize  this  in  our  geography 
and  history  ;  we  may  wisely  recognize  it  also  in  our 
reading. 

Yet  in  the  same  order  there  is  an  incipient, 
prophetic  humanism  before  there  is  a  conscious 
nationalism,  and  this  earlier  stage  of  the  mind 
requires  food  of  its  own  kind.  I  said  just  now  that 
we  had  sufficient  classic  American  literature  to 
answer  the  demands  of  the  exercises  in  reading 
above  the  elementary  period.  To  meet  the  needs 
of  the  earliest  years,  after  the  primer  has  been  fin- 
ished, we  have  in  our  reading-books  chiefly  tried  to 
produce  moral  effects.  We  have  been  too  anxious 
to  teach  elementary  ethics  by  means  of  elementary 
readers,  and  if  we  have  given  ourselves  up  to  what 
may  be  called  vmmoral  literature,  we  have  been 
content  to  reproduce  for  the  child  just  the  limited 
experience  of  life  which  itg  senses  may  have  taught 
it.  We  have  left  out  of  account  that  very  large 
element  of  wonder  which  inheres  in  the  young 
child's  nature,  and  we  have  been  too  neglectful  of 
that  pure  sentiment  to  which  the  child  is  quick  to 
respond.  We  are  to  find  the  literature  for  this 
period  in  the  corresponding  period  of  the  world's 
childhood.     The  literature  of  fable,  myth,  and  le- 


THE  PLACE   OF  LITERATURE.  31 

gend  may  be  drawn  upon.  The  ancient  Avorld,  the 
mediaeval  world,  and  the  infrequent  children-au- 
thors o£  the  modern  world,  of  whom  Andersen  is  the 
leader,  may  all  be  laid  under  contribution  to  satisfy 
the  demands  for  literature  which  shall  not  leave  the 
child  just  where  it  was  after  it  has  conned  it,  but 
shall  have  given  wings  to  its  fancy  and  imagination, 
and  suffered  it  to  take  flight  beyond  the  little  con- 
fines of  its  sight  and  hearing.  Literature  of  this 
sort  makes  the  transition  from  the  primer  to  na- 
tional literature. 

The  place,  then,  of  literature  in  our  common- 
school  education  is  in  spiritualizing  life,  letting 
light  into  the  mind,  inspiring  and  feeding  the 
higher  forces  of  human  nature.  In  this  view,  the 
reading-book  becomes  vastly  more  than  a  mere 
drill-book  in  elocution,  and  it  becomes  of  the  great- 
est consequence  that  it  shonid  B&  rigorously  shut 
up  to  the  best,  and  not  made  the  idle  vehicle  of  the 
second-best.  It  must  never  be  forgotten  that  the 
days  of  a  child's  life  are  precious  ;  it  has  no  choice 
within  the  walls  of  the  school-room.  In  its  hours 
for  readin*;  it  nmst  take  what  we  give  it.  Be  sure 
that  the  standard  5lfeich  we  set  in  our  school  read- 
ing-books will  inevitably  affect  its  choice  of  reading 
out  of  school ;  that  the  conceptions  which  it  forms 
of  literature  and  the  ideal  life  will  be  noble  or  ig- 
noble, according  as  we  use  our  oppoi-tunities.  It  is 
for  us  to  say  whether  the  American  child  shall  be 
brought  up  to  have  its  rightful  share  in  the  great 
inheritance  of  America. 


32  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOLS. 

For,  after  all,  we  never  have  got  to  the  bottom 
of  such  a  subject  as  this  until  we  have  answered 
the  question,  What  relation  has  it  to  true  Ameri- 
canism? We  repeat  to  ourselves  that  we  have 
organized  and  are  carrying  on  our  magnificent  sys- 
tem of  free  public  schools,  in  order  that  the  chil- 
*dren  of  this  country  may  grow  up  loyal  Americans. 
The  cry  of  danger  at  the  withdrawal  of  great  bod- 
ies of  children,  to  be  bred  in  schools  which  have 
no  organic  connection  with  the  state,  springs  from 
the  fear  that  such  children  will  be  less  American. 
But  what  are  we  doing  in  our  own  schools  to  cidti- 
vate  a  large,  free  American  spirit  ?  And  what  are 
the  elements  of  that  spirit  ? 

I  answer  the  second  question  first.  There  is  the 
element  of  continuity.  In  the  Roman  household 
there  stood  the  cinerary  urns  which  held  the  ashes 
of  the  ancestors  of  the  family.  Do  you  think 
the  young  ever  forgot  the  unbroken  line  of  descent 
by  which  they  climbed  to  the  heroic  founders  of 
the  state  ?  In  the  Jewish  family  the  child  was 
taught  to  think  and  speak  of  the  God  of  Abra- 
ham, and  of  Isaac,  and  of  Jacob.  In  that  great 
succession  he  heard  a  voice  which  told  him  his 
nation  was  not  of  a  day.  It  is  the  business  of 
the  old  to  transmit  to  the  young  the  great  tradi- 
tions of  the  past  of  the  country ;  to  feed  anew  the 
undying  flame  of  patriotism. 

There  is  the  element  of  destiny.  No  nation  lives 
upon  its  i)ast ;  it  is  already  dead  when  it  says : 
"  Let  us  eat  and  drink  to-day ;  to-morrow  we  die." 


THE  PLACE   OF  LITERATURE.  33 

But  what  that  destiny  is  to  be  may  be  read  in  the 
ideals  which  the  young-  ai'e  forming- ;  and  those 
ideals,  again,  it  is  the  business  of  the  old  to  guide. 
They  cannot  form  them  ;  the  young  must  form 
them  for  themselves,  but  whether  those  ideals  shall 
be  large  or  petty,  honorable  or  mean,  will  depend 
much  upon  the  sustenance  on  which  they  are  fed. 

Now,  in  a  democracy  more  signally  than  under 
any  other  form  of  national  organization,  it  is  vitally 
necessary  that  there  should  be  an  unceasing,  un- 
impeded circulation  of  the  spiritual  life  of  the 
people.  The  sacrifices  of  the  men  and  women  who 
have  made  and  preserved  America  from  the  days  of 
Virginia  and  New  England  to  this  hour  have  been 
ascending  from  the  earth  in  a  never-ending  cloud ; 
they  have  fallen  again  in  strains  of  music,  in  scidp- 
ture,  in  painting,  in  memorial  hall,  in  tale,  in  ora- 
tion, in  poem,  in  consecration  of  life,  and  the  spirit 
which  ascended  is  the  same  as  that  which  descended. 
In  literature,  above  all,  is  this  spirit  enshrined. 
You  have  but  to  throw  open  the  shrine  and  the 
spirit  comes  with  its  outspread  blessing  upon  mill- 
ions of  waiting  souls.  Entering  them,  it  reissues 
in  countless  shapes,  and  thus  is  the  life  of  the  nation 
in  its  highest  form  kept  ever  in  motion,  and  with- 
out motion  is  no  life. 


NURSEEY  CLASSICS  IN  SCHOOL. 

There  is,  in  many  of  our  cities,  a  ^anii  of 
charity  which  touches  one  by  its  beauty  and  by  its 
pathetic  suggestion.  A  Day  Nursery  provides  for 
those  little  children  who  need  and  want  a  mother's 
care.  While  the  mother  is  absent  from  home, 
earning  her  day's  living,  her  small  folk  are  depos- 
ited in  the  friendly  house,  where,  with  their  neigh- 
bors in  poverty,  they  have  warmth,  sunshine,  food, 
and  the  care  which  make  the  nursery  in  all  well- 
to-do  homes  the  most  sheltered  spot  in  creation. 
Meanwhile,  the  pity  of  it  is  that  harsh  necessity 
separates  the  mother  and  cliild  when  each  needs 
the  other  most,  and  that  the  companionship  which 
braids  spiritual  cords  stronger  than  the  natural 
ligament  just  severed,  is  brief,  hurried,  and  inade- 
quate. A  stranger  takes  the  mother's  place,  and 
orplianage  becomes  a  half-normal  condition. 

A  like  misfortune,  with  somewhat  fuller  com- 
pensation, befalls  the  children  not  of  the  poor 
alone  when  the  toddling  age  has  passed.  By  means 
of  the  kindergarten  the  jjeriod  of  school  life  has 
been  pushed  back  of  its  old  limits,  and  the  forces 
of  oiu'  society  conspire  in  a  hundred  ways  to  place 
children  early  in  school,  and  to  keep  them  there  ; 
the  poor  go  scarcely  sooner  than  the  rich,  but  they 


NURSERY  CLASS  res.  35 

leave  earlier.  The  organization  of  education  goes 
on,  and,  if  one  dares  to  say  so,  the  disorganization 
of  the  family  goes  on  also.  Every  year  more  is 
exacted  of  the  school.  It  must  teach  the  hands  as 
well  as  the  head  ;  it  must  teach  the  domestic  arts, 
the  rudiments  of  trade,  the  latter  half  of  the  ten 
commandments,  the  sermon  on  the  mount,  but  not 
the  life  behind  it.  Character  must  there  be  formed 
as  well  as  mental  habits ;  and  as  for  religion,  there 
is  the  Sunday-school.  The  notion  of  what  consti- 
tutes education  has  not  so  much  expanded  as  the 
notion  of  the  place  of  education.  Tlie  school-house 
is  Ijecoming  the  American  temple  ;  it  borrows  from 
the  church  and  the  family,  leaving  one  dry  and 
the  other  weakened. 

So  far  has  this  gone  that  the  school  has  even 
begun  to  assert  its  authority  over  the  family,  and 
by  so  doing  has  conferred  an  unexpected  blessing. 
After  he  has  sent  the  child  to  school  to  learn  what- 
ever is  needed,  the  parent  discovers  the  school 
sending  the  child  home  to  learn  extra  lessons. 
It  is  a  question  whether  the  possible  Injury  of 
overwork  is  not  counterbalanced  by  the  necessity 
laid  on  the  parent  of  helping  the  child,  learning 
its  lessons  with  it,  and  so  once  more  getting  en- 
trance into  a  domain  from  which  he  had  shut  him- 
self out.  It  is  not  the  worst  thing  that  can  happen 
to  a  fatlier  or  mother  to  be  forced  into  intellectual 
companionship  with  their  child. 

In  this  increasing  monopoly  of  the  child  by  the 
school  there  is  a  loss  of  tradition  also.     In  games, 


36  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

to  be  sure,  it  still  holds.     In  spite  of  all  the  Boijis 
Own  Boohs  and  American  Girls   Books,  and  the 
like,  children  still  learn  from  each  other,  and  know 
marble-time  and  kite-time  without  reference  to  the 
almanac.     But  books  supersede  tradition  in  litera- 
ture, and  from  the  brothers  Grimm  to  the  present 
industry  of  folklore  societies  the  constant  cry  is  to 
save  the  stories  of  the  people  before  they  have  died 
out    of    memory.     Thus    the  only  tradition   which 
children  have,  for  the  most  part,  is  that  which  con- 
cerns the  family.     They  learn    from    the   lips    of 
their   parents  and  grandparents  what  adventures 
fell  within  the  narrow  range  of  their  personal  ex- 
perience, but  for  all  else  they  are  sent  to  books. 
It  would  be  a  curious  inquiry,  how  few  children 
to-day  know  the  story  of  Cinderella  as  told  to  them, 
and  how  many  know  it  from  hearing   it   read  or 
from  reading  it  themselves. 

Since,  then,  it  is  to  books  that  we  must  go  for 
the  stories  which  have  grown  smooth  from  being 
rolled  down  the  ages  of  Indo-European  peoples, 
and  since  the  school  so  largely  controls  the  child's 
mental  growth,  it  follows  that  if  these  stories  are 
to  remain  as  a  substantial  possession  of  childhood 
of  all  sorts  in  America,  they  must  be  conserved  by 
school  methods.  The  Bill  of  Rights  for  children 
has  never  been  formally  drawn,  but  one  of  its 
articles  is  unquestionably  the  right  to  enjoy  these 
tales.  Not  all  children  have  an  equal  aptitude  for 
appropriating  them,  but  the  instances  known  of 
those  who  are  absolutely  indifferent  at  the  proper 


NURSERY  CLASSICS.  37 

a^e  to  the  charm  of  nursery  classics  are  so  few 
that  they  may  be  pronounced  abnormal,  or  referred 
to  some  extremely  perverse  conditions  of  nurture. 
But  the  rio-ht  is  one  which  children  cannot  well  as- 
sert  for  themselves,  though  there  have  been  many 
instances  whei'e  the  joy  has  been  snatched  covertly 
and  in  a  spirit  of  independence.  It  is  the  business 
of  their  guardians,  therefore,  to  see  that  children 
are  not  deprived  of  this  right ;  and,  as  already  in- 
timated, the  present  guardians  of  children  in  Amer- 
ica are  teachers,  superintendents,  school-committees, 
boards  of  education,  publishing-houses,  agents, 
makers  of  school-books,  and  occasionally  parents. 
The  teachers  have  the  fullest  control,  and  the  influ- 
ence diminislies  along  the  line  of  the  remaining 
forces.  It  will  be  said,  and  by  none  more  ear- 
nestly than  the  teachers  themselves,  that  they  are 
bound  and  hampered  by  all  the  other  powei's ; 
but  my  observation  leads  me  to  think  that  pretty 
much  all  the  genuine  improvement  in  educational 
methods  has  sprung  from  the  brains  and  practical 
work  of  teachers. 

A  prime  reason  for  introducing  these  nursery 
classics  into  the  early  years  of  school  life  is  in  the 
economy  of  resources.  At  present  the  child  passes 
from  the  primer  to  what  are  known  as  graded  read- 
ers. These  readers  continue  through  the  school 
course  in  most  cases,  and  form  the  body  of  litera- 
ture to  which  children  are  introduced  in  school. 
In  the  higher  grades  of  these  readers  there  are 
often  classic  poems  and  passages  from  the  works 


38  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

of  masters  of  prose ;  the  proportion  of  lasting  work 
to  ephemeral  is  small ;  still  it  exists,  and  many 
children  have  known  hits  of  real  literature  only 
from  their  readers.  But  in  the  lower  grades,  that 
is  in  the  first,  second,  third,  and  even  fourth  read- 
ers, there  is  scarcely  a  piece  of  genuine  literature  ; 
the  proportion  of  ephemeral  to  lasting  work  is 
enormous.  Yet  it  is  in  the  years  when  these 
grades  are  read  that  the  great  majority  of  children 
pass  their  school  life.  After  the  fourth  or  fifth 
year  of  school  the  number  of  attendants  rapidly 
diminishes.  For  the  most  pai't,  children  close 
their  school  life  with  absolutely  no  introduction  to 
literature.  They  have  learned  to  read,  but  they 
have  had  nothing  to  read.  They  have  not  been 
shown  what  books  they  should  read. 

There  is  a  great  waste,  then,  in  the  present 
system  of  reading.  Hours,  days,  and  weeks  are 
spent  in  dreary  droning  over  books  which  are  as 
much  left  behind  as  the  boy's  jacket  or  the  girls' 
pinafore,  when  outgrown.  What  child  ever  re- 
members the  matter-of-fact,  trivial,  and  common- 
place incidents  and  shadowy  personages  that  oc- 
cupy the  pages  of  its  early  school-readers?  Yet 
merely  for  the  purpose  of  training  the  child  in  the 
art  of  reading,  good  literature  is  as  serviceable  as 
lean  ;  and  since  good  literature  sticks  in  the  mem- 
ory when  lean  has  faded  away,  the  child  that  has 
been  given  something  notable  to  read,  when  learn- 
ing the  art,  has  practiced  a  true  economy,  for  it 
has  stored  a  force  as  well  as  acquired  an  art. 


NURSERY  CLASSICS.  39 

What,  then,  is  at  the  disposal  of  the  teacher  and 
the  child,  when  the  primer  and  the  blackboard 
have  done  their  work?  What  constitutes  the 
child's  natural  introduction  into  that  great  world 
of  literature,  for  the  sake  of  which  all  these  labors 
in  mastering'  twenty-six  characters  and  their  com- 
binations have  been  undertaken  ?  All  great  liter- 
ature represents  a  continual  process  of  selection  ; 
the  sifting  goes  on  unceasingly,  and  in  the  higher 
grades  of  school  work  the  principle  is  unhesitat- 
ingly accepted  of  placing  before  the  pupil  the 
works  which  are  first  in  rank  in  their  respective 
classes.  The  rank  has  been  determined  by  the 
accordance  of  the  best  minds  in  all  ages,  acting 
upon  their  generation.  Thus  Homer,  Herodotus, 
-(Eschylus,  Sophocles,  Euripides,  Plato,  Aristotle, 
Virgil,  Caesar,  Cicero,  hold  imdisputable  command, 
and  whatever  excursions  may  be  allowed,  these  are 
fixed  stations.  Precisely  in  the  same  way  there  are 
certain  classics  for  children  which  have  stood  the 
test  of  generations  of  use,  and  are  accepted  not  as 
candidates  for  favor,  but  as  established  favorites. 
The  testing  still  goes  on,  and  in  the  gradual  sof- 
tening of  manners  certain  rude,  not  to  say  brutal, 
features  in  these  classics  are  either  causing  the 
stories  containing  them  to  fall  into  disuse,  or  are 
slouched  off  in  modern  versions.  The  wolf  in  Little 
Bed  Riding  Hood  has  been  the  mark  for  the  ar- 
rows of  the  maiden's  brothers,  and  Jack  the  Giant' 
Killer  falls  behind  in  nursery  popularity. 

These    distinctions    are    to   be    noted   between 


40  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

nursery  classics  and  the  major  classics,  that  the 
former  have  no  inviolable  form  and  no  individual 
authorship.  Probably  the  stories  of  the  Iliad  and 
the  Odyssey  had  no  fixed  form  until  Homer,  or 
"  another  man  of  the  same  name,"  determined  it ; 
but  the  stories  of  the  nursery  are  still  in  the  tradi- 
tional fluent  period,  and  probably  never  will  secure 
a  permanent  literary  shape.  Perrault  largely  deter- 
mined the  specific  structure  of  soriie  of  them,  and 
the  Grimms  came  as  near  as  any  to  fixing  others ; 
but  later  raconteurs  have  felt  under  no  obligation 
to  preserve  the  form  of  words  of  Perrault  and 
Grimm,  or  the  nameless  writers  of  chap-books, 
though  they  have  rarely  departed  widely  from  the 
traditional  structure  of  the  stories,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  Cruikshank,  who  had  the  whim  to  turn  the 
tales  into  use  as  temperance  tracts. 

The  absence  of  personal  authorship  is  a  happy 
argument  in  favor  of  using  these  stories  in  the  early 
education  of  children.  It  is  during  the  very  period 
when  the  nursery  classics  fit  into  its  life  that  the 
child  is  oblivioiis  to  the  fact  of  authorship  in  any 
story.  To  it  a  story  is  a  story,  and  it  is  absolutely 
incurious  as  to  who  wrote  the  story.  Only  when 
its  interest  has  begun  to  take  note  of  some  personal 
relation  of  author  to  work  does  the  child  need  to 
pass  from  the  realm  of  the  great  unknown  stories 
to  that  of  the  known,  and  the  transition  is  fortu- 
nately made  by  a  familiarity  with  Hans  x\ndersen, 
whose  stories  belong  in  general  kind  to  those  of 
unknown    authorship,    while    his    own    personality 


NURSERY  CLASSICS.  41 

steals  out  to  attract  and  even  fascinate  the  young 
reader. 

The  drawback  to  the  use  of  tliese  nursery  clas- 
sics in  the  school-room  undoubtedly  has  been  in 
the  absence  of  versions  which  are  intellig-ible  to 
children  of  the  proper  age,  reading  by  themselves. 
The  makers  of  the  o^raded  readino^-books  have  ex- 
pended  all  their  ingenuity  in  grading  the  ascent. 
They  have  been  so  concerned  about  the  gradual 
enlargement  of  their  vocabularies  that  they  have 
paid  slight  attention  to  the  ideas  which  the  words 
were  intended  to  convey.  But  just  this  gradation 
may  be  secui-ed  through  the  use  of  these  stories, 
and  it  only  needs  that  they  should  be  written  out 
in  a  form  as  simple,  especially  as  regards  the  or- 
der of  words,  as  that  which  obtains  in  the  reading- 
books  of  equivalent  grade.  At  present  we  are  met 
by  this  difficulty :  that  these  stories  in  their  cus- 
tomary form,  while  not  too  hard  for  a  child  to  un- 
derstand who  hears  them  read,  are  too  hard  for  the 
child  to  read  at  the  age  when  they  are  most  enjoy- 
able and  fix  themselves  most  securely  in  the  imagi- 
nation. They  ought,  we  will  say,  to  be  read  by  a 
child  who  is  in  the  second  and  third  readers ;  by 
the  time  the  child  is  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  readers 
he  is  ready  for  more  mature  forms  of  literature. 
Thus  they  are  liable  to  be  lost  out  of  life  alto- 
gether ;  they  are  too  difficult  when  the  child  could 
best  read  them  ;  their  attractiveness  is  lost  when 
the  child  becomes  able  to  read  them. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  school  is  to 


42  LITERATURE  IN  SCUOOL. 

many  cliildren  a  harbor  of  refuge  during  their 
early  years.  From  their  teachers  they  hear  com- 
mands unenforced  by  blows  and  unaccompanied  by 
foul  words.  They  get  glimpses  of  a  world  of  order 
and  neatness.  For  a  few  hours  each  day  squalor 
and  noise  and  cruelty  are  remote  and  forgotten. 
To  such  children  the  school  may  also  be  an  admis- 
sion into  a  world  of  beauty,  and  like  Cinderella,  in 
the  tale,  they  may  until  twelve  o'clock  strikes,  be 
dancing  with  the  Prince  in  the  palace.  But  with- 
out separation  of  social  states,  it  may  be  said  of  all 
children  in  the  tender  age  that  their  lives  need  to 
be  enriched  and  enlarged,  and  that  it  is  the  gra- 
cious office  of  the  imagination  to  do  this.  In  this 
plea  for  the  introduction  of  nursery  classics  into 
the  school-room,  I  assume  that  the  finest  use  to 
which  the  jDower  of  reading  can  be  put  is  in  the 
enlightenment  of  the  mind,  not  in  its  information  ; 
and  I  hold  that  this  use  must  be  steadily  kept  in 
view  from  the  first  day  of  school  life  to  the  last. 
There  will  be  many  ways  by  which  reading  may 
serve  the  end  of  imparting  knowledge,  but  unless 
the  definite  end  of  ennobling  the  mind  through  fa- 
miliarity with  the  literature  of  the  spirit  is  recog- 
nized in  our  school  curriculum,  the  finest  results 
of  education  will  be  lost.  The  use  of  reading  is 
not  exhausted  when  the  child  has  been  enabled  to 
read  the  daily  newspaper  or  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States.  The  preparation  for  citizenship 
which  regards  only  the  education  of  the  understand- 
ing will  be  as  inadequate  as  the  resulting  concep- 


NURSERY   CLASSICS.  43 

tion  of  national  life  will  be.  The  education  of  the 
spirit  through  religion  has  been  left  with  the 
church  and  what  remains  of  the  higher  family  life  ; 
the  education  through  literature  must  be  taken  up 
by  the  schools,  else  a  great  and  irremediable  defect 
will  appear  in  the  development  of  character  and 
spiritual  force,  and  this  education  must  begin  at 
the  earliest  period  with  the  properest  material. 
The  child  that  has  spent  the  hours  devoted  to  read- 
ing, in  its  primary  course,  over  fables,  fairy-tales, 
folk-tales,  and  the  best  of  such  stories  as  go  to 
make  up  the  Gesta  Romanorum  and  Christian  my- 
thology, has  had  a  foundation  laid  for  steady  prog- 
ress into  the  higher  air  of  poetry  and  all  imagina- 
tive, creative,  and  inspiring  literature. 


AMERICAN  CLASSICS   IN   SCHOOL. 

A  LEXICOGRAPHER  once  asked  me  to  define  for 
him,  historically,  the  phrase  common  school,  as 
used  in  America,  and  to  discriminate  it  from  the 
similar  phrase,  j)uhlic  school.  I  had  not  learning 
enough  to  answer  the  former  half  of  the  demand, 
but  I  conjectured  that  the  gradual  substitution  of 
the  latter  phrase  for  the  earlier  came  about  from 
the  growth  of  private  schools,  especially  in  the 
richer  communities,  thereby  requiring  a  sharper 
distinction  in  terms.  I  suppose  that  the  applica- 
tion of  the  word  coynmon  to  schools  grew  out  of  the 
familiar  use  of  the  word  amongst  English-speaking 
people  in  connection  with  other  associated  interests, 
as  land,  law,  and  worship. 

The  term  common  school  is,  at  all  events,  a 
sound  form  of  words,  and  one  full  of  significance. 
It  calls  us  back  to  the  prime  consideration.  There 
is  now  and  then  rumor  of  an  assault  upon  the  pub- 
lic treasury  for  the  support  of  private  schools  which 
are  under  the  control  of  some  society  of  men,  re- 
ligious or  otherwise,  and  the  defense  against  such 
assault  is  in  the  right  that  only  public  schools  shall 
be  supported  out  of  the  public  tax.  This  position 
is  not  easily  overthrown,  yet  there  is  a  higher 
ground  for  the  maintenance  of   common   schools. 


AMERICAN  CLASSICS.  45 

A  common  school  stands  over  against  a  class  school, 
however  the  class  may  be  defined,  whether  in  terms 
of  society  or  religion,  and  the  commonwealth  is 
rightly  jealous  of  this  common  property  in  edu- 
cation. 

There  has  always  been,  therefore,  a  criticism  of 
the  common  school,  whenever  the  proposal  has 
been  made  to  introduce  studies  which  look  to  the 
advantage  of  the  individual  member  rather  than  to 
that  of  the  whole  community  ;  and  the  most  potent 
argument  against  the  present  movement  in  favor 
of  industrial  studies  is  the  instinctive  feeling  that 
the  common  schools  would  thereby  be  diverted  into 
the  business  of  educating  mechanics.  It  is  a  pity 
that  this  feeling  could  not  have  been  appealed  to 
as  well  in  alarming  the  public  mind  over  the  ten- 
dency of  the  common  schools  to  an  over-production 
of  clei'ks.  A  considerable  part  of  the  energy  ex- 
pended in  our  common  schools  seems  to  be  nar- 
rowed into  this  channel. 

That  the  safety  of  the  republic  depends  upon  the 
educated  intelligence  of  the  people  is  one  of  the 
truisms  of  our  political  ci-eed.  There  is  no  more 
telling  antithesis  in  a  speech  on  public  education 
than  that  which  sets  the  sums  expended  for  stand- 
ing armies  in  Europe  against  the  vast  sums  ex- 
pended for  common  schools  in  America,  though 
now  and  then  some  critic  does  interpose  a  paren- 
thesis containing  the  figures  of  our  great  ])ension 
account ;  and  probably  nine  out  of  ten  educated 
Americans,  if  asked  what  is  the  chief  end  of  the 


46  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

common  schools,  would  answer,  To  make  good 
American  citizens. 

The  recipe  for  making  good  American  citizens 
is  not  always  analyzed,  and  one  is  bound  to  admit 
that  in  some  cases  the  result  is  half-baked  speci- 
mens ;  but  the  analyst,  when  pressed  for  particu- 
lars, rarely  fails  to  fall  back  upon  the  generalities 
of  mental  development,  with  a  saving  clause  in 
favor  of  the  study  of  American  history  as  a  specific 
for  accomplishing  the  end  in  view,  while  an  in- 
creasing body  of  educators  insist  upon  the  necessity 
of  incorporating  in  common-school  courses  of  study 
an  intelligible  acquaintance  with  political  forms. 

Now  I  should  be  the  last  to  undervalue  sucli 
studies,  and  I  earnestly  hope  that  the  common 
schools  of  the  country  may  give  distinct  and 
marked  attention  both  to  history  and  to  political 
science,  and  so  adjust  the  teaching  of  them  as  to 
reach  the  great  mass  of  children  who  close  their 
school  life  at  the  age  of  fourteen  ;  but  there  is  be- 
hind the  facts  of  history  and  the  methods  of  poli- 
tics something  more  intangible,  yet  more  vital  to 
any  large  and  lasting  conception  of  Americanism, 
and  the  resources  at  Our  command  for  communi- 
cating the  spirit  which  vitalizes  national  life  are 
simple,  natural,  and  effective. 

The  deposit  of  nationality  is  in  laws,  institutions, 
art,  character,  and  religion  ;  but  laws,  institutions, 
character,  and  religion  are  expressed  througli  art, 
and  mainly  througli  the  art  of  letters.  It  is  litera- 
ture, therefore,  that  holds  in  precipitation  the  gen- 


AMERICAN   CLASSICS.  47 

ius  of  the  country,  and  the  higher  the  form  of  liter- 
ature, the  more  consummate  the  expression  of  that 
spirit  which  does  not  so  much  seek  a  materializa- 
tion as  it  shapes  itself  inevitably  in  fitting  form. 
Long  may  we  read  and  ponder  the  life  of  Wash- 
ington, yet  at  last  fall  back  content  upon  those 
graphic  lines  of  Lowell  in  Under  the  Old  Elm^ 
which  cause  the  figui"e  of  the  great  American  to 
outline  itself  upon  the  imagination  with  lai'ge  and 
strong  portraiture.  The  spirit  of  the  orations  of 
Webster  and  Benton,  the  whole  history  of  the 
young  giant  poised  in  conscious  strength  before  his 
triumphant  struggle,  one  may  catch  in  a  breath  in 
those  glowing  lines  which  end  The  Building  of  the 
Ship.  The  deep  passion  of  the  war  for  the  Union 
may  be  overlooked  in  some  formal  study  of  battles 
and  campaigns,  but  rises  pure,  strong,  and  flaming 
in  the  immortal  Gettysburg  speech. 

It  is  this  concentration  in  poetry  and  the  more 
lofty  prose  which  gives  to  literary  art  its  precious- 
ness  as  a  symbol  of  human  endeavor,  and  renders 
it  the  one  essential  and  most  serviceable  means  for 
keeping  alive  the  smouldering  coals  of  patriotism. 
It  is  the  torch  passed  from  one  hand  to  another, 
signaling  hope  and  warning ;  and  the  one  place 
above  all  others  where  its  light  should  be  kindled 
is  where  the  young  meet  together,  in  those  Ameri- 
can temples  which  the  people  have  built  in  every 
town  and  village  in  tj^e  country.  It  may  be 
doubted  if  any  single  voice  did  so  much  to  stir 
young  America  into  sympathy  with  the  Greeks  in 


48  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

their  rising  for  independence  as  Halleck's  Marco 
Bozzaris,  which  was  shouted  from  every  school- 
house  in  the  land ;  and  while  older  men  in  the 
North  were  discussing  the  bearings  of  the  Seventh 
of  March  speech,  their  boys  were  declaiming  from 
the  school- house  rostrum  the  magnificent  burst 
at  the  close  of  Webster's  second  speech  on  Foot's 
resolution,  ignorant  that  already  they  were  hear- 
ing the  trumpet-call  which  should  lead  them  on 
to  death  for  that  Union  which  was  Webster's  high- 
est inspiration.  As  men  grow  older  they  become 
interested  in  questions  of  government  and  politics, 
and  are  ready  to  make  sacrifices  of  time  and  money 
to  secure  certain  political  results,  in  which  their 
own  individual  interest  is  after  all  very  slight  and 
vague.  This  is  practical  patriotism,  and,  despite 
the  pessimistic  belief  of  those  who  are  enlightened 
only  by  dramatic  situations,  it  was  never  more  at 
the  command  of  the  country  than  now.  But  it  is 
not  uncommon  to  hear  from  such  practical  patriots, 
especially  when  they  remember  the  fervor  of  1861, 
expressions  of  skepticism  as  to  the  continuous  ex- 
istence of  the  sentiment  of  patriotism.  Of  course 
so  general  a  doubt  may  be  answered  by  as  general 
an  affirmation,  and  we  are  no  nearer  the  exact 
truth  ;  but  this  is  certain,  that  practical  patriotism 
is  by  no  means  so  dependent  upon  considerations  of 
expediency  and  personal  advantage,  or  even  duty, 
as  it  is  upon  the  undying  sentiment  of  patriotism. 
As  well  might  we  say  that  practical  religion  rested 
only  in  a  sense  of  duty.     Its  springs  are  in  love  of 


AMERICAN  CLASSICS.  49 

God  ;  let  these  become  dry  and  choked  through  the 
failure  to  hold  conscious  communion  with  Him,  and 
practical  religion  will  be  but  a  barren  fig-tree. 
Precisely  thus,  the  sentiment  of  patriotism  must  be 
kept  fresh  and  living  in  the  hearts  of  the  young 
through  quick  and  immediate  contact  with  the 
sources  of  that  sentiment ;  and  the  most  helpful 
means  are  those  spiritual  deposits  of  patriotism 
which  we  find  in  noble  poetry  and  lofty  prose,  as 
communicated  by  men  who  have  lived  patriotic 
lives  and  been  fed  with  coals  from  the  altar. 

If  all  this  be  true,  we  are  bound  to  make  as  de- 
liberate a  provision  for  keeping  this  sentiment  of 
patriotism  alive  as  we  are  to  provide  against  the 
possibility  of  an  attack  upon  the  nation  from  for- 
eign enemies.  Indeed,  the  strongest  defense  is  in 
the  inexpugnable  sentiment.  If  love  of  country  is 
something  more  than  a  creature's  instinct  for  self- 
preservation,  if  it  be  inwoven  with  love  of  righteous- 
ness and  the  passion  for  redeemed  humanity,  then 
it  may  be  cultivated  and  strengthened,  and  ought 
not  to  be  left  to  the  caprice  of  fortune. 

The  common-school  system  is  the  one  vast  organ- 
ization of  the  country,  elastic,  adapted  in  minor 
details  to  local  needs,  but  swayed  by  one  general 
plan ;  feeling  the  force  of  educated  public  senti- 
ment, and  manipulated  by  the  free,  intelligent  as- 
sociation of  teachers  and  superintendents.  This 
orjranization  offers  the  most  admirable  means  for 
the  cultivation  and  strengthening  of  the  sentiment 
of  patriotism,  and  it  avails  itself  of  it  in  many  ways. 


50  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

The  great  national  holidays  are  made  occasions. 
Notable  anniversaries  are  improved.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  the  young  men  and  women  of  to^ 
day  between  twenty  and  thirty  are  far  more  earnest 
citizens  because  of  the  centennial  fever  which  raged 
from  1874  to  1877.  But  aside  from  and  beyond 
these  special  means,  the  most  important  aid  of  all 
is  to  be  found  in  a  steady,  unremitting  attention 
to  American  classics. 

It  may  be  said,  and  with  a  show  of  truth,  that 
it  would  be  possible  to  bring  into  one  compact  vol- 
ume the  great,  direct  utterances  of  American  poets, 
orators,  and  romancers  upon  the  vital  theme  of  our 
country,  and  that  such  a  book  as  a  vade  mecum 
could  be  mastered  in  a  brief  portion  of  the  school 
curriculum.  But  one  feels  instinctively  that  this 
end  of  patriotism  is  not  to  be  attained  by  the  con- 
centration of  the  mind  upon  it  for  a  given  time ; 
that  the  sentiment  of  patriotism  is  not  something 
to  pass  a  written  examination  upon,  at  the  end  of  a 
course  of  study.  The  larger  results  are  attained  in 
this  as  in  other  pursuits  by  broadening,  not  by  nar- 
rowing, the  range.  The  book  of  patriotism  which 
might  thus  be  culled  is  an  indiscriminated  part 
of  the  whole  body  of  American  literature,  and  its 
power  is  gi^eater  as  one  comes  into  acquaintance 
with  the  whole,  and  not  with  selected  parts.  It  is 
not  the  "  golden  texts,"  so  called,  which  animate 
the  religious  mind ;  it  is  the  free  and  full  use  of 
the  whole  Bible ;  and  the  literature  of  America, 
taken  in  its  large  and  comprehensive  sense,  is  worth 


AMERICAN   CLASSICS.  51 

vastly  more  to  American  boys  and  girls  than  any 
collection  which  may  be  made  from  it  of  "  memory 
gems." 

I  have  written  as  if  a  prime  advantage  of  making 
much  of  American  classics  in  school  lay  in  the 
power  which  this  literature  has  of  inspiring  a  no- 
ble love  of  country.  But  in  the  spiritual  universe 
there  are  no  fences,  and  the  fields  of  patriotism  and 
righteousness  lie  under  the  same  stars.  Righteous- 
ness transmuted  into  the  terms  of  patriotism  is  the 
appeal  from  lower,  material  good  to  that  which  is 
higher  and  overarching.  Now  our  schools,  with 
their  close  relation  to  the  business  of  life,  demand 
a  reinforcement  on  the  side  of  spirituality.  They 
have  been  more  and  more  secularized,  and  it  will 
only  be  as  the  people  become  largely  at  one  on  re- 
ligious matters  that  they  can  ever  recover  a  dis- 
tinctly religious  character.  Meanwhile,  literature 
and  music  remain  as  great  spiritualizing  forces,  and 
happily  no  theoretic  differences  serve  to  exclude 
them  from  the  common  schools.  It  is  to  literature 
that  we  must  look  for  the  substantial  protection  of 
the  growing  mind  against  an  ignoble,  material  con- 
ception of  life,  and  for  the  inspiring  power  which 
shall  lift  the  nature  into  its  rightful  fellowship  with 
whatsoever  is  noble,  true,  lovely,  and  of  good  re- 
port. Mr.  Parsons,  in  his  thoughtful,  warning 
paper  on  Ilie  Decline  of  Duty ^  strikes  the  keynote 
of  our  present  peril  when  he  says,  "A  materialist 
civilization  can  never  be  a  safe  one."  He  does  not 
1  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  May,  1887. 


52  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

point  out  the  preservative  forces,  nor  intimate  very 
distinctly  to  what  we  are  to  look  for  a  corrective  of 
present  tendencies  ;  but  in  the  same  number  of  the 
journal  containing  his  paper  is  a  glimpse  of  a  boy- 
hood which  leaves  strongly  impressed  on  the  mind 
the  figure  of  a  "  boy  i-eading  Plato,  covered  to  his 
chin  with  a  cloak,  in  a  cold  upper  chamber."  It  is 
not  so  much  in  the  story  of  that  life  that  we  are  to 
seek  for  influences  counteracting  material  greed  as 
in  words  which  have  flowed  from  the  lips  of  the 
man,  whose  boyhood  knew  privations.  How  many 
young  minds  have  leapt  at  the  words,  — 

' '  So  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 
So  near  is  God  to  man, 
Wlien  Duty  whispers  low,  Thou  must, 
The  youth  replies,  I  can  "  / 

How  many,  also,  have  felt  their  pulses  thrill  with 
the  exultant  words  of  that  declaration  of  indepen- 
dence, 

"  Good-by,  proud  world !     I  'm  going  home  "  ! 

But  how  large  an  inheritance  of  spiritual  power 
might  such  minds  acquire,  if  the  golden  days  of 
their  youth  were  spent  over  the  prose  and  poetry 
which  embody  a  life  of  high  endeavor  and  secret 
worship ! 

It  is  from  the  men  and  women  bred  on  American 
soil  that  the  fittest  words  come  for  the  spiritual 
enrichment  of  American  youth.  I  believe  heartily 
in  the  advantage  of  enlarging  one's  horizon  by 
taking  in  other  climes  and  other  ages,  but  first  let 


AMERICAN   CLASSICS.  63 

US  make  sure  of  that  great  expansive  power  which 
lies  close  at  hand.  I  am  sure  there  never  was  a 
time  or  country  when  national  education,  under  the 
guidance  of  national  art  and  thought,  was  so  pos- 
sible as  in  America  to-day.  The  organization  of 
schools  is  practically  complete  ;  statutes  and  public 
sentiment  have  carried  it  so  far  that  an  era  of  criti- 
cism has  set  in.  Meanwhile,  we  have  now  for  the 
first  time  a  perspective  of  national  literature.  The 
rise  of  new  men  and  new  methods  was  needed  to 
give  the  requisite  fullness  to  our  conception  of 
the  art  of  the  older  school ;  and  as  we  move  away 
from  the  dividing  line  of  1861,  we  are  more  clearly 
cognizant  of  that  body  of  humane  letters  which 
was  then  inherently  fixed,  but  needed  the  vista  of 
a  score  of  years  to  become  clearly  marked  to  our 
eyes. 

We  are  not  so  much  concerned  to  discriminate 
the  work  of  the  older  Americans  as  we  are  ready 
to  accept  the  men  themselves,  with  their  well-recog- 
nized personality.  The  process  of  sifting  goes  on 
silently,  but  however  it  may  come  to  set  the  mark 
of  approbation  on  this  or  that  particular  produc- 
tion, it  is  not  likely  that  the  group  of  men  will  be 
much  enlarged  or  diminished.  Any  list  made  now 
oi  what,  for  lack  of  a  better  word,  we  may  call 
standard  American  authors,  would  inevitably  con- 
tain certain  names,  unless  the  maker  of  the  list 
were  possessed  of  some  paradoxical  humor.  The 
majority  vote  in  the  long  run  determines  the  sway 
of    literary   rulers  and   governors.      Just  because 


54  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

there  are  a  few  authors  who  have  an  incontestable 
position  in  America,  we  may  and  ought  to  turn  to 
them  for  the  foundation  of  a  love  and  knowledge 
of  pure  literature,  and  my  plea  is  that,  whatever 
else  is  done  in  the  way  of  reading  in  our  common 
schools,  these  authors  should  command  the  chief 
and  first  attention ;  that  school  courses  should  be 
arranged  so  as  to  give  them  a  definite  place,  just 
as  our  American  school  geographies  give  the  United 
States  in  detail,  and  follow  with  rapid  study  of 
Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa,  and  just  as  United 
States  history  has  the  preference  in  order  over 
European  history  and  ancient  history. 

The  real  point  of  practical  reform,  however,  is 
not  in  the  preference  of  American  authors  to  Eng- 
lish, but  in  the  careful  concentration  of  the  minds 
of  boys  and  girls  upon  standard  American  litera- 
ture, in  opposition  to  a  dissipation  over  a  desultory 
and  mechanical  acquaintance  with  scraps  from  a 
variety  of  sources,  good,  bad,  and  indifferent.  In 
my  paper  on  Nursery  Classics  in  School,  I  ar- 
gued that  there  is  a  true  economy  in  substituting 
the  great  books  of  that  portion  of  the  world's 
literature  which  represents  the  childhood  of  the 
world's  mind  for  the  thin,  quickly  forgotten,  feeble 
imaginations  of  insignificant  bookmakers.  Thore 
is  an  equally  noble  economy  in  engaging  the  child's 
mind,  when  it  is  passing  out  of  an  immature  state 
into  one  of  rational,  intelligent  appropriation  of 
literature,  upon  such  carefully  chosen  classic  work 
as  shall  invigorate  and  deepen  it.      There  is  plenty 


AMERICAN   CLASSICS.  55 

of  vagrancy  in  reading ;  the  public  libraries  and 
cheap  papers  are  abundantly  able  to  satisfy  the 
truant ;  but  it  ought  to  be  recognized  once  for  all 
that  the  schools  are  to  train  the  mind  into  appreci- 
ation of  literature,  not  to  amuse  it  with  idle  diver- 
sion ;  to  this  end,  the  simplest  and  most  direct 
method  is  to  place  before  boys  and  girls  for  their 
regular  task  in  reading,  not  scraps  from  this  and 
that  author,  duly  paragraphed  and  numbered,  but 
a  wisely  selected  series  of  works  by  men  whom 
their  country  honors,  and  who  have  made  their 
country  worth  living  in. 

The  continuous  reading  of  a  classic  is  in  itself 
a  liberal  education  ;  the  fragmentary  reading  of 
commonplace  lessons  in  minor  morals,  such  as  make 
up  much  of  our  reading-books,  is  a  pitiful  waste 
of  growing  mental  powers.  Even  were  our  read- 
ing-books composed  of  choice  selections  from  the 
highest  literature,  they  would  still  miss  the  very 
great  advantage  which  follows  upon  the  steady 
growth  of  acquaintance  with  a  sustained  piece  of 
literary  art.  I  do  not  insist,  of  course,  that  Evan- 
geHne  should  be  read  at  one  session  of  the  school, 
though  it  would  be  exceedingly  helpful  in  train- 
ing the  powers  of  the  mind  if,  after  this  poem  had 
been  read  day  by  day  for  a  few  weeks,  it  were  to 
be  taken  up  first  in  its  separate  thirds,  and  then  in 
an  entire  reading.  What  I  claim  is  that  the  boy 
or  girl  who  has  read  Evangeline  through  steadily 
has  acquired  a  certain  power  in  appropriating 
literature   which   is  not   to   be   had   by  reading  a 


56  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

collection  of  minor  poems,  —  the  power  of  long- 
sustained  attention  and  interest. 

If  we  could  substitute  a  full  course  of  reading 
from  the  great  American  authors  for  a  course  in 
any  existing  graded  series  of  readers,  we  should 
gain  a  further  advantage  in  teaching  children 
literature  without  frightening  them  with  the  vast 
spectre  of  literature.  Moliere's  doctor  spoke  prose 
all  his  life  without  discovering  it,  and  children 
taught  to  read  literature  may  escape  the  haunting- 
sense  that  there  is  a  serious,  vague  study  known 
as  literature,  which  has  hand-books  and  manuals, 
and  vast  dictionaries,  and  cyclopaedias,  and  Heaven 
knows  what  mountains  shutting  it  out  from  the 
view  of  ordinary  mortals.  There  is  a  deal  of 
mischief  in  teaching  young  people  about  literature 
and  perhaps  giving  them  occasional  specimens,  but 
all  the  while  keeping  them  at  a  distance  from  the 
real  thing. 

At  the  same  time,  with  American  literature  for 
the  great  body  of  reading  in  our  common  schools, 
there  would  be  the  further  advantage  that  just 
when  the  boy  or  girl  was  beginning  to  appreciate 
the  personal  element  in  books,  to  associate  the 
author  with  what  the  author  said,  the  teacher 
would  be  able  to  satisfy  and  stimulate  an  honor- 
able curiosity.  The  increasing  attention  pkid  to 
authors'  birthdays  illustrates  the  instinctive  de- 
mand from  the  schools  that  the  authors  thus  com- 
memorated should  be  part  and  parcel  of  the  school 
life.       An  immense  store  of  fresh  and  deliehtful 


AMERICAN  CLASSICS.  57 

material  is  at  the  command  of  teachers,  for  use 
in  ilkistrating  the  works  of  the  greater  American 
authors  ;  and  that  part  of  the  school  course  which 
is  devoted  to  reading  may  thus  be  enriched  and 
vitalized  in  a  hundred  ways,  to  the  manifest  en- 
largement of  the  mind  of  the  pupil. 

The  objection  is  sometimes  made  to  this  general 
scheme  that  the  slow  development  of  the  mind  re- 
quires the  books  for  reading  to  be  graded  carefully, 
and  a  great  deal  of  very  minute  attention  has  been 
given  to  securing  an  easy,  natural,  and  progressive 
grade.  It  is,  of  course,  apparent  that  a  boy  who 
has  mastered  only  easy  combinations  of  words  can- 
not at  once  be  set  to  reading  Thoreau's  Wild 
Apples,  however  keen  may  be  his  interest  in  prac- 
tical experiments  upon  the  subject  of  Thoreau's 
paper.  Grading  is  necessary,  and  it  is  entirely 
possible  to  apply  the  principle  to  American  classics 
for  schools.  Not  literature  made  to  order  to  suit 
certain  states  of  the  juvenile  mind,  but  those  parts 
of  existing  literature  selected  in  a  wise  adjustment 
of  means  to  end,  —  that  is  the  sokition  of  the  prob- 
lem of  gradation.  If  Hawthorne's  Wonder- Booh 
is  too  hard,  there  are  still  simpler  examples  of 
Hawthorne's  sympathetic  prose.  The  body  of 
wholesome,  strong  American  literature  is  large 
enough  to  make  it  possible  to  keep  boys  and 
girls  upon  it  from  the  time  when  they  begin  to 
recognize  the  element  of  authorship  until  they 
leave  school,  and  it  is  varied  and  flexible  enough 
to  give  employment  to  the  mind  in  all  its  stages 


68  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

of  development.  Moreover,  this  literature  is  in- 
teresting, and  is  allied  with  interesting  concerns ; 
half  the  hard  places  are  overcome  by  the  willing 
mind,  and  the  boy  who  stumbles  over  some  jejune 
lesson  in  his  reading-book  will  run  over  a  bit  of 
genuine  prose  from  Irving,  which  the  school-book 
maker  with  his  calipers  pronounces  too  hard. 

The  American  classics  little  by  little  have  been 
making  their  way  into  schools,  edging  themselves  in 
sometimes  under  the  awkward  title  of  Supplemen- 
tary Reading,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  every 
year  will  see  them  intrenched  more  securely.  It 
is  noticeable  that  the  movement  in  this  direction  is 
corrective  of  a  somewhat  recent  condition,  and  en- 
couragement may  be  drawn  from  the  comparatively 
short  life  of  the  graded  reading-books.  Men  in 
middle  life  remember  when  these  books  first  came 
into  vogue;  before  that  time  the  reading -books 
were  made  up  of  selections  from  standard  English 
literature.  Many  a  person  has  grateful  recollection 
of  these  earlier  books  for  the  stimulus  which  they 
gave  to  a  liking  for  fine  literature,  and  certain  pas- 
sages in  Shakespeare  probably  owe  their  celebrity 
less  to  the  stage  and  less  to  the  popularity  of  the 
plays  in  which  they  occur  than  to  the  fact  that  they 
have  been  read  and  delivered  by  millions  of  school- 
children. But  with  the  great  expansion  of  the 
school  system,  and  especially  with  the  rapid  growth 
of  cities,  the  organization  of  schools  became  a  prime 
consideration,  and  with  this  organization  came  a 
rapid   development   of    school-books   on   the    side 


AMERICAN  CLASSICS.  59 

which  most  readily  appeals  to  the  systematizing 
and  mechanical  mind.  Reading-books  were  finely 
graded,  and  to  secure  this  supreme  good  of  grada- 
tion the  individuality  of  literature  was  subordinated. 
That  was  used  wliich  was  most  convenient  and  lent 
itself  most  readily  to  the  all-important  end  of  easy 
gradation. 

We  have  gone  quite  far  enough  in  the  mechanical 
development  of  the  common-school  system.  What 
we  most  need  is  the  breath  of  life,  and  reading- 
offers  the  noblest  means  for  receiving  and  impart- 
ing this  breath  of  life.  The  tendency  of  our 
schools  is  always  toward  an  assimilation  of  the 
common  life  of  the  country,  and  there  is  no  danger 
that  they  will  not  be  practical  enough.  Arithmetic 
passes  into  the  making  out  of  bills  and  the  cal- 
culation of  interest.  Writing  gravitates  toward 
business  forms.  Geography  points  to  commercial 
enterprises.  Reading  finds  its  end  in  a  Sunday 
newspaper.  But  the  common  life  of  the  country  has 
also  its  heroic,  its  ideal  temper,  and  it  is  the  busi- 
ness of  those  who  have  to  do  with  schools  to  see  to 
it  that  this  side  is  not  neglected.  This  requires 
thought,  adaptation  of  means  to  ends,  organization. 
To  secure  a  just  equilibrium,  we  need  to  use  the 
great  power  of  reading,  and  apply  it  to  what  is 
noble  and  inspiriting.  The  spiritual  element  in 
education  in  our  common  schools  will  be  found  to 
lie  in  reserve  in  literature,  and,  as  I  believe,  most 
effectively  in  American  literature. 

Think  for  a  moment  of  that  great,  silent,  resist- 
less power  for  good  which  might  at  this  moment  be 


60  LITERATURE  IN  SCHOOL. 

lifting  the  youth  of  the  country,  were  the  hours  for 
reading  in  school  expended  upon  the  undying,  life- 
giving  books  !  Think  of  the  substantial  growth  of 
a  generous  Americanism,  were  the  boys  and  girls 
to  be  fed  from  the  fresh  springs  of  American  litera- 
ture !  It  would  be  no  narrow  provincialism  into 
which  they  would  emerge.  The  windows  in  Long- 
fellow's mind  looked  to  the  east,  and  the  children 
who  have  entered  into  possession  of  his  wealth 
travel  far.  Bryant's  flight  carries  one  through  upper 
air,  over  broad  champaigns.  The  lover  of  Emer- 
son has  learned  to  get  a  remote  vision.  The  com- 
panion of  Thoreau  finds  Concord  become  suddenly 
the  centre  of  a  very  wide  horizon.  Irving  has  an- 
nexed Spain  to  America.  Hawthorne  has  national- 
ized the  gods  of  Greece  and  given  an  atmosphere  to 
New  England.  Whittier  has  translated  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  into  the  American  dialect.  Lowell  gives 
the  American  boy  an  academy  without  cutting  down 
a  stick  of  timber  in  the  grove,  or  disturbing  the 
birds.  Holmes  supplies  that  hickory  which  makes 
one  careless  of  the  crackling  of  thorns.  Franklin 
makes  the  America  of  a  past  generation  a  part  of 
the  great  world  before  treaties  had  bound  the  float- 
ing States  into  formal  connection  with  venerable 
nations.  What  is  all  this  but  saying  that  the  rich 
inheritance  which  we  have  is  no  local  ten-acre  lot, 
but  a  part  of  the  undivided  estate  of  humanity? 
Universality, '  cosmopolitanism,  —  these  are  fine 
words,  but  no  man  ever  secured  the  freedom  of 
the  universe  who  did  not  first  pay  taxes  and  vote 
in  his  own  village. 

STATE  NOkvMAL  SCHOOL, 

'  IiOS  A^CEUES,  CAU. 


SECOND  AND  THIRD  READERS. 


The  Book  of  Fables. 

CHIEFLY   FROM   ^SOP. 
Chosen  and    phrased   by  Horace   E.  Scudder. 

Uontaiuing  in  language  wliich  is  simple,  clear,  and  intelligiMe  to 
young  children,  "  The  Boy  and  the  Wolf,"  "  The  Boys  and  the 
Frogs,"  "The  Crow  and  the  Fox,"  "Belling  the  Cat,"  "The 
Boy  who  Stole  Apples,"  "  The  Fox  that  Lost  his  Tail,"  "  The 
Dog  and  his  Image,"  and  fifty-eight  other  stories.  16mo,  80 
pages,  38  illustrations.     40  cents,  net. 

From  the  Preface  :  — 

The  simplest,  most  child-like  form  [of  literature]  is  the  fable,  and 
there  are  good  reasons  why  a  book  of  fables  should  be  the  first  real 
book  which  a  child  reads.  In  the  first  place,  the  fable  is  short.  The 
child  has  the  pleasure  of  reading  an  entire  story  at  one  sitting.  Then, 
it  is  of  animals,  and  animals  are  the  natural  companions  of  the  child. 
Again,  it  is  interesting  and  novel :  it  appeals  to  his  imagination,  for 
it  represents  the  animal  as  having  human  properties ;  and  it  suggests 
a  plain  moral. 


The  Book  of  Folk  Stories. 

Rewritten  by  Horace  E.  Scudder. 

Containing  "The  Three  Bears,"  "Hans  in  Luck,"  "Puss  in 
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Noail  Webster.  lu  American  Men  of  Letters  Series.  Witik 
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American  Poems.  Containing  representative  Poems  from  the 
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Aldrich.    The  Story  of  a  Bad  Boy 70 

Andersen.     Stories ....  50 

Arabian  Nights,  Tales  from  the.* 50 

Bacon.     A  Japanese  Interior 60 

Brown,  John.     Rab  and  his  Friends ;  and  Other  Dogs  and  Men 60 

Bunyan.     The  Pilgrim's  Progress 50 

Burroughs.     Birds  and  Bees,  and  Other  Studies  in  Nature 60 

Cooper.     The  Last  of  the  Mohicans 70 

Dana.     Two  Years  Before  the  Mast 70 

Defoe.     Robinson  Crusoe 60 

Dickens.     A  Christmas  Carol,  and  The  Cricket  on  the  Hearth 50 

Eliot,  George.     Silas  Marner -. 

Emerson.    Poems  and  Essays 50 

Fiske.     The  War  of  Independence 60 

Franklin.     Autobiography 5  > 

Goldsmith.     The  Vicar  of  Wakefield 50 

GrifRs.     Brave  Little  Holland 60 

Grimm.     German  Household  Tales 50 

Hawthorne.     Grandfather's  Chair,  or.  True  Stories  from  New  England  History 

and  Biographical  Stories 70 

"  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables 70 

"  The  Wonder-Book,  and  Tanglewood  Tales /o 

Holmes.     The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table 60 

"  Grandmother's  Story,  and  Other  Verse  and  Prose 50 

Hughes.     Tom  Brown's  School  Days 60 

Irving.     Essays  from  the  Sketch  Book 50 

{ewett,  Sarah  Orne.     Tales  of  New  England 60 
yamb.     Tales  from  Shakespeare 60 

Larcom,  Lucy,     A  New  England  Girlhood 60 

Longfellow.     The  Children's  Hour,  and  Other  Poems.. 60 

"  Evangeline,  Hiawatha,  and  The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish 60 

"  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn 60 

Lowell.    The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,  and  Other  Poems . 

Miller,  Olive  Thome.     Bird- Ways . 

Milton.     Minor  Poems,  and  Books  I. -III.  of  Paradise  Lost -o 

Parton.     Captains  of  Industry,  First  Series 

"  Captains  of  Industry,  Second  Series 

Richardson,  Abby  Sage.     Stories  from  Old  English  Poetry 

Scott.     Ivanhoe 

"         The  Lady  of  the  Lake ■' 

Scudder.     Fables  and  Folk  Stories jo 

"  George  Washington 00 

Shakespeare.     Julius  Cssar,  and  As  You  Like  It. So 

Stowe.     Uncle  Tom's  Cabin -70 

Swift.     Gulliver's  Voyages  to  Lilliput  and  Brobdingnag "o 

Tennyson.     Enoch  Arden,  The  Coming  of  Arthur,  and  Other  Poems 

Thaxter,  Celia.     Stories  and  Poems  for  Children 

Warner.     Being  a  Boy 

Whittier.     Selections  from  Child  Life  in  Poetry  and  Prose 

"  Snovv-Bound,  The  Tent  on  the  Beach,  and  Other  Poems.  - 

Wiggin,  Kate  Douglas.     Polly  Oliver's  Problem 

*  The  books  marked  with  a  star  are  in  preparation  for  speeedy  issue- 
The  others  are.nov)  ready,     {yime  I,  iSgj.) 

A  circtclar  giving  a  coiitplete  description  of  each  hook  ■will  be  sent  on  applicatiot. 

HOUGHTON,    MIFFLIN    AND    COMPANY. 


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